


The Steadfastness of Stars

by itsnatalie



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Injury, M/M, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-07-31 14:47:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 61,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsnatalie/pseuds/itsnatalie
Summary: After the recompletion of the Enterprise following Altamid, the Enterprise is called to the snowy planet of Jadis to investigate a mysterious climate change affecting the people. When Jim and his away team are stranded on the planet, they realize there's more on Jadis than they bargained for. Meanwhile, Jim struggles to keep his feelings for his First Officer under control.





	1. Chapter 1

_ _______________________________________________________ _

_ “Would it be too childish of me to say: I want? But I do want.” _

_ -Sylvia Plath _

_ ___________________________________________________________ _

Spock had his arguments and his calm, cool statements all laid out in a neat and precise line before the call from his father ever came. 

No, he would not return to New Vulcan. Yes, he would continue his employment on the Enterprise, and would be on board her when she was released to the stars again. He was committed to this once more, committed to his exploration of the galaxy, delving into new parts of the universe and discovering everything there. 

Vulcans, he reminded his father, had explored the galaxy before any other species. It was this path that he chose to keep to, as a proud Vulcan and an avid scientist. 

All this he said, and it was precisely what it should have been: logical. Clean. Meticulous. His father expressed his understanding and, even rarer, his pride at Spock’s decision and reasoning. He was a merit to the Vulcans, and would continue to be from wherever he chose.

Spock could almost hear his mother’s voice, echoing his father’s sentiments as he walked back to his quarters that evening: _ whatever you choose, you will have a proud mother. _

It was his mother’s heritage that he thought of that evening, when he locked his door behind him. He settled down to meditate and confronted the reality of this situation—the reality of what had cemented him back into his Science blues. 

All those impersonal, perfectly logical reasons for remaining with Starfleet, and he couldn’t make any of them hold a candle to the switch that had flipped his decision, the exhausted, battle-weary question that had pulled him back and cemented him in— 

_ “What would I do without you, Spock?” _

He was interrupted.

“My apologies, Commander Spock.” Nyota’s voice was light and teasing, her earth-colored eyes warm against a cashmere sweater. “Are you free this evening?”

Something blue flashed through Spock’s mind; a suspiciously familiar shade, but Spock had become so good at ignoring it that he hardly noticed it anymore. Jim Kirk had lived so close in physical proximity to Spock for so long that it was natural and expected for him to have moved into Spock’s thoughts. 

Presumably, anyway. 

He took his coat down from where it hung next to the door—it was expected to be especially cold that night. “Of course, Nyota.” 

______

Jim Kirk was standing on the balcony of a sixth floor in Yorktown, waiting for it to snow. 

He had his back to the railing, elbows hooked carelessly onto it, head flung back to watch the thick, rolling clouds. They were the kind of clouds that formed a fat, misshapen blanket: he could still see the sky on either horizon, the last rays of the sun, as if the blanket wasn’t quite big enough to cover the whole bed. 

He remembered the last time he had seen it snow. Starfleet Academy, just over five years ago. He’d had a girl then—a real, long-term one, not just one to take mutual pleasure in for a night before both of them carelessly and freely let each other go in the morning. They’d competed for top of their class for months before they’d gone onto their separate emphasis tracks and parted ways academically—and personally moved into the same bed. 

Bilquis, her name was. “Bilquis. Like with a Q.” She’d had a cloud of dark curls, and the snowflakes had gotten caught in that hair, on her tiny pink tongue that darted out to taste them, on the hands that held his— “I’m from a planet that is always covered in snow like this,” she’d told him. They had split amicably two days later, the snow still on the ground. 

He remembered when the thing that he thought was love was easy, and warm. Easily satisfied, easily given—a warm bed, sheets twisted, a careless hello, and sometimes an even more careless good-bye. Sometimes it hurt, sure. But there was always something new to learn about, to devour, and whisky, and distractions—and the stars. You couldn’t really be in love, Jim had decided, when you were in love with the stars. It trumped all other loves. When the stars had you, even love was bearable. Even love was trivial. 

That is, until you started seeing the stars in somebody else. When you could see the ever-shifting light of the stars in somebody else’s eyes, that was the real trouble. That was when you knew you were fucked.

He wondered what trick of the universe it was that he had found love and love-making so incredibly simple and light until he had actually gone to the stars—when he’d actually finally been immersed in the ocean of space that love had hit him so hard that he sometimes thought that he could feel it in his spine, in his fingers, in his elbows. 

He opened his eyes and stared up at the mass of clouds.

Somebody’s quiet laughter sounded, and he tilted his head back up, away from his sky, to look back into the brightly lit building, through the glass doors. 

The glow of the lamps shone on Nyota’s skin, making it look like it was illuminated from within. Her dark hair gleamed warmly, and she turned to make another comment to Spock, who was emerging behind her.

God. Jim winced. He wished he hadn’t listened so aggressively for the news of their split—it made their actual breakup feel more momentous than it had actually turned out to be. Then came Altamid, and Spock flinging himself into danger to go after Nyota, who was apparently wearing a (slightly radioactive) necklace from Spock’s _ mother. _

Fuck you, life. 

Spock’s hair gleamed a cooler tone than Nyota’s, his eyes dark and calm. Jim was grateful for the shore leave simply because it had taken some of the tension out of his First Officer, if nothing else. Spock seemed cool and collected again, sure of his course—unlike his obvious turmoil and indecision from a mere weeks ago. Spock, thrown temporarily from his path by the death of his alternate self, was once again centered. 

Apparently still on the Enterprise.

Jim couldn’t decide which was worse: watching Spock love someone else but stay by his side, or watch Spock walk away completely. 

Because he was a masochist, he didn’t intend to ever find out how the second option felt. He’d had his glimpses, but never permanently enough to leave a mark. 

Jim closed his eyes again as Nyota turned her face to Spock. It had left him only stunned the first time he had ever witnessed their physical affection, but over the years it had become something brutal, tender as a bruise. It hurt him now, plain and simple, in a way that he had never dreamed of. 

He felt a pale, cold brush on his face: the soft biting touch of a snowflake. It didn’t take long for other cold kisses to follow—the clouds opening, finally. 

He wasn’t jealous of Nyota. He loved Nyota now as much as any of his crew—she was part of his family, and he wanted her to be happy. 

And as for Spock— 

Well. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to see Spock happy. 

He opened his eyes, and mercifully, Nyota was gone, having retired to her quarters. 

Spock, however, had spotted him. He quirked an eyebrow—puzzled, most likely, that Jim would be outside on a night like tonight, with snow now falling thick and heavy around him. Jim shrugged in response, half-grinning at him. 

He could almost feel Spock’s patient exasperation as Spock zipped up his coat tighter and opened the glass door. 

Jim wished he didn’t feel more like _ Jim _when Spock approached him. He watched as snow caught in the dark gloss of Spock’s hair. 

“You are not adequately dressed for this weather phenomenon,” Spock observed when he was close enough, looking very pointedly at Jim’s open leather jacket. 

Jim huffed a laugh, slow and pleased. “I like it when it snows. It feels like Christmas.”

“There does seem to be a shift in the mood of the crew.” 

“Shore leave is good for them.” Jim closed his eyes and leaned back again, tipping his head back, feeling the snow on his face, his exposed throat. “Boosts morale, and all that.” 

“You had an adequately satisfactory birthday?” 

Jim smiled, still with his eyes closed. “Yes. Though you didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”

Spock sounded pleased when he replied, “It was the combined efforts of your crew. I cannot take individual credit.” 

They stood in peaceful silence for a moment, Jim basking in the snow, Spock content to sit and watch the sky. 

Jim couldn’t force himself to think of Nyota. He didn’t care, honestly, when Spock was next to him. 

Fucked. Absolutely. He opened his eyes.

“It’s a little cold out here for a Vulcan,” Jim said, lifting his head and looking at Spock. He lifted one challenging eyebrow, noting the way that Spock seemed to have hunched in on himself for warmth. 

Spock met his eyes evenly. “I am perfectly capable of adapting.” 

Jim chuckled at the unexpressed belligerence. “I was just wondering if you needed to go inside at some point.” 

“Will you not also retire soon?”

Jim tilted his head, feeling as the snow settled and melted in his hair. “I’m thinking.” 

Spock waited, watching him patiently, and Jim knew exactly how this situation would go because it had happened hundreds of times before: Jim would stew about something for a minute until Spock magically appeared to pull him out of his own thoughts, force him to recalibrate his whole life until something satisfactory formed, and then help him solve the problem—all while watching with dark eyes that Jim had learned every nuance of, every minute shift, until they seemed as expressive as any human’s. 

Jim met his eyes, but only fleetingly, because— 

“Were you really going to leave?”

Oops. He hadn’t _ quite _meant it that bluntly— 

Yes, he had. 

He wanted to know, because simply put, he had had no idea how he was going to go on being captain without his first officer. How was one to _ be _a captain without their other half? 

How would he have been able to do it alone?

He would have had the rest of his crew, of course. He could have found a suitable First Officer. 

Then, of course, it became another question, one so difficult to answer that he hadn’t allowed himself to fully form it: how would he reshape his life without someone he had come to view as a constant? 

And even worse: when Spock forgot him, how would he do the same?

Fuck you, life. 

Spock’s face was blank with surprise when Jim finally forced himself to look. Jim had caught him off guard. 

_ You and me both, my love. _

He’d had a thousand opportunities to ask Spock this, but he’d done it now, when the quiet dripped from every surface, when the world was muffled and still, when it seemed like they were the only two people in the world. 

Jim let Spock think after he got over his initial surprise. Spock always let Jim gather his thoughts, and Jim let Spock gather his. 

“I was,” said Spock at last, simply. 

Jim wondered if that was the full answer, and then realized, just as simply, that he was satisfied with it: I _ was. _As in, no longer. 

Jim looked down at his hands, then said, “I was, too.” 

He knew that Spock had known that; hence Spock’s questioning about Jim’s interview with the Commodore Paris at his birthday party. Further than that, though...they hadn’t had this discussion. A huge separation had loomed, and then all of a sudden, before either of them could properly confront it, it had vanished. Both of them had pulled out at the last second. 

Spock said, still simple: “I know.” It was still calm and measured, and Jim knew what it meant: it was still a _ was. _ There was nothing _ logically _ to get worked up about, or to resolve, because it was a _ was. _Neither of them were going anywhere, except on the Enterprise, except together. 

_ Logically, _ nothing had changed, except the fact that they’d _ almost _parted ways forever. 

Goddammit. 

Jim clenched his hands and wished, for the umpteenth time, that he could have borrowed another heart. That for once, he could love Spock tonight, in the light of the streetlights, in the gentle fall of the snow, and return that heart in the morning. That when the sun came up, and reality put other people back into their orbit, that he didn’t keep loving. 

That he could go just one single second where he didn’t wish that Spock loved him, too. 

The snow fell heavier, and the blanket of clouds closed over the horizon. 

_ Just till tomorrow, _ thought Jim, turning to face Spock again. _ Another heart, just till tomorrow. _

Spock met his eyes and asked, “Why did you consider leaving, Jim?”

Jim blinked. 

Okay.

Maybe not resolved, then. 

Jim gave him a smile, full of self-deprecation. 

_ You. _

“Thought a change of pace might be nice,” was what he said, and the edge of sarcasm gave his lie away immediately. 

Spock quirked an eyebrow, but before he could ask, Bones was opening the door behind them and saying pleasantly, “You filthy motherfuckers, get in here before I give you pneumonia _ myself. _ Jim Kirk, for _ God’s _ sake, you’re only wearing a _ jacket, _ do you know how cold it is out there? Spock, you’re from the goddamn _ desert.” _

And that was the end of that. 

_____

As it turned out, their first assignment upon the re-completion of the Enterprise was to the planet Jadis, which was, in fact, just as cold as that night. And there was snow on it, all the time.

That night of the first snowfall in Yorktown still bothered Spock. He had sorted through it, piece by piece, until he had pinpointed exactly where his discomfort came from: Jim had never told him the real reason he’d considered leaving. 

He paced the familiar halls of the Enterprise, a newfound appreciation for the crisp clean lines of the ship, the orderly precision of the keenly reshaped engines. This was indeed where he belonged, in this streamlined place, where everything ran like clockwork and Jim Kirk was in the center chair, glowing with excitement and radiating the confidence of someone who had come home after a long journey. 

He knew Jim knew why he himself had courted the idea of departing. Logically, anyway, they were the same arguments he’d marched out for his father: to help his species, to be with his own kind—to help them rebuild a fractured legacy, a torn home. 

He went to his quarters after a long shift and shut his doors, preparing for his night. 

To anyone else, he could have listed forty-seven reasons almost immediately as to why it was beneficial and efficient to leave the Enterprise. Jim, however, would have required a different explanation: truth was different from reason, and Jim was the sort of rare person who mandated that the first was more important than the second. He was both relieved and puzzled that Jim had not pressed him for his specifics. 

_ “What would I do without you, Spock?” _

Spock had realized, in the seconds after he’d desperately grasped for Jim’s hands and through sheer willpower pulled his captain to safety, that leaving the Enterprise would mean shattering their partnership, perhaps parting from him forever. 

It seemed foreign to him, then. A possibility that he never even should have entertained, no matter how logical. 

Spock was reminded why he had not discussed his leaving prior to that night with Jim: if he had tried to talk about leaving with Jim about _ leaving Jim, _he never would have been able to do it. Perhaps in logic, in his own mind, but not in practice, not with Jim staring at him, reminding him of every disastrous time they had tried separating their professional and personal lives. 

(And of course, once—never discussed again—when Jim had left first, unintentionally, locked behind a glass door, a factory-strength radiation lock the only thing keeping Spock from fighting his way into the warp core chamber, radiation poisoning be damned—)

Spock forced his thoughts away from that memory. His left hand remembered lining up with Jim’s through the glass. 

No, leaving was not an option. 

But for Jim? 

Spock settled down to meditate. If he considered it, he could tell that he knew to his core that Jim never could have left the stars. They called to him, and even when their song had waned for a little, the universe never would have let go of Captain James T. Kirk. It was a love affair that had, as far as Spock could tell, gone on for Jim’s entire life, and so could not be dissolved—and thus Spock had never doubted that Jim would change his mind and stay aboard his beloved ship.

So what had momentarily distracted him? It was not, Spock knew, a desire for a “change of pace.” He knew how to read Jim as much as Jim knew how to read him. 

A puzzle. Spock would have to ask Jim about it later to find the missing piece, because no matter how much he combed through their conversation in his memory, he could not find the answer. 

The next day, he went about his duties, and the day after that. In fact, he never found time to ask Jim about it before they reached Jadis, despite it taking the better part of two weeks and the fact that most of his evenings were spent in Jim’s company, playing chess or doing paperwork or generally taking care of life aboard the Enterprise. It was a habit both of them had fallen into: it was rare that they didn’t spend at least some of their off time in the same room. 

Spock felt like this was a piece of information to put somewhere, but it was an equation he hadn’t quite found yet. 

He didn’t have time to sort relevant from irrelevant information pertaining to that particular scenario before they arrived at their destination. Even from space, Jadis was white. Spock had to channel his revulsion into something more productive. 

“Goddamn,” remarked Dr. McCoy, staring through the window of the ship at the faintly glowing planet, scowling. “That looks like a bucket of problems waiting to happen. If you get hypothermia _ or _ pneumonia, Jim, I’m not clearing you for duty for _ weeks. Weeks, _do you hear me? Plural.” 

“Cheer up, Bones,” said Jim from where he was scanning an information database. Spock was at his right, patiently waiting: he’d already memorized all pertinent sections. “I know somebody from this planet. She’s since become a Starfleet ambassador, she’ll be waiting for us.”

“What exactly is their issue, anyway?” Dr. McCoy was still scowling, and Spock privately agreed with the sentiment. 

As Jim was still reading, Spock volunteered, “Their planet has experienced subzero temperatures for a period of over a thousand years, and as such, the way of life of the people of Jadis has become dependent on just this phenomenon. Over the last several weeks, however, the temperatures have begun altering alarmingly, and since they fail to fall within the parameters of observed anomalies, have begun to cause structural and ecological damage to the point of concerning permanence.”

“Their _ weather _is changing? What’s happening?”

“It’s warming up, Bones,” said Jim, flicking through his PADD as they walked; Spock was tempted to take Jim’s shoulder and steer him just so he wouldn’t collide with people or objects. “They might have summer and that might literally be the end of the world for them.” 

“So we’re...supposed to do what, exactly?” demanded Bones, still looking thoroughly irritated. “Control the weather? Ask it nicely to cool back down for them?” 

“The people of Jadis have explored all possibilities, including the conceivable but highly unlikely option of sudden global warming,” said Spock. “Such data and research has proved negative, and they have discovered that the anomaly seems to be coming from some source directly on the planet’s surface.” 

“Something’s really fucking hot on that planet that wasn’t there before, and they think it might be man-made,” Jim supplied. “They think somebody’s messing deliberately with their planet.”

“While they are a very wealthy planet, they have successfully made and maintained peace with all surrounding planets. They cannot provide any immediate suspects who would desire to cause such rampant destruction on their population.”

“Helpful,” said Jim. 

“So there’s gonna be a landing party,” grumbled McCoy. “Because we can’t _ safely _ take care of it from up here, safely, on a _ safe _temperature-controlled surface.”

“Got it in one, Bones,” said Jim briskly, letting his PADD fall to his side. “I’ll lead it down there, we’ll see what’s fucking shit up, we’ll get out.”

“May I remind you,” said Dr. McCoy, this time directly to Spock, “that you’re a _ Vulcan?” _

“I have not forgotten, Doctor, nor am I likely to,” said Spock. “To what do I owe this reminder?”

Jim snickered and Bones seethed. “_ Deserts, _ Spock,” he snapped. “You’re gonna be fucking _ freezing.” _

“I am fully aware of the temperature change,” said Spock primly. 

“We’ll bundle him up all the way to his Vulcan eyebrows, Bones, stop worrying,” said Jim, rolling his eyes over his shoulder at his friend. “And if there’s trouble, I’ll just beam him back up.”

“In the event of trouble, I will stay precisely where I am,” said Spock dryly, who was well aware of their track record with “trouble” and their continued likelihood of running into it. 

Jim snorted, obviously following his train of thought, as the call of “Captain on bridge” rang out, and their conversation was cut short. 

_____

In the end, the landing party was small, to scope things out and obtain further information for Starfleet: the captain, because of his acquaintance with the Jadis ambassador, Spock, and Chekov: as it turned out, and to nobody’s surprise, he was an expert in weather anomalies, specifically relating to subzero temperatures— “Well, I am wery good with weather in general, but I am liking subzero much more because it is more interesting… so I am better with this. If there is something radiating unnatural heat, sir, I can find it.”

It was then that Spock recalled the climate of the Terran country of which Chekov originated, and concluded that the lieutenant’s analyses would be sound. 

Spock was sufficiently equipped with heavier winter gear than even the other two, and there were specific heating points throughout that would keep his temperature regulated thanks to Dr. McCoy (“I swear to God if any of you come back so much as sneezing it’ll be the end of that planet as they know it because I’m gonna blow it up myself”) and still he was wary. He didn’t mind planning for cooler temperatures almost at all times due to his species, but this was an entirely different matter. The Jadis people had adapted even a different lung capacity to adjust for a lower oxygen radius in the air, not to mention a tremendous capacity for withstanding extremely low temperatures. 

All in all, he would be pleased to get this over with. 

Chekov happily chattered away to Jim all the way to the planet’s surface, and every so often, Jim would lock eyes indulgently with Spock over the console whenever Chekov said something Jim found particularly endearing. 

Spock had not said goodbye to Nyota, but, he reasoned, they would be back soon anyway, and it would not be missed. 

He had not spoken to her for several days, either. He had simply not had the time.

Spock then wondered why he was attempting to force a relationship when clearly it was just that: forced. 

Although he had several unsolved equations in his life of late, this one wasn’t unsolved: it was wrong now, where it had not been previously. It had become tilted; some variable had shifted, and it did not equal what it had before. 

Troubling. Knowing Nyota, she had most likely arrived at that conclusion already. He would speak with her about it when they arrived back at the Enterprise. 

When the doors opened, Spock blinked in the brilliant reflective light pouring off the snow, and then his shoulders tensed as a blast of frigid air washed into their transporter. 

“This is,” said Chekov, slowing for breath for what seemed like the first time after disembarking the Enterprise, “wery, _ wery _cold.”

Jim snorted and strode forward. Spock, after a soft exhale that was almost a sigh, followed. 

Chekov made a sound that successfully conveyed his displeasure and trooped after them, out onto Jadis. 

If Spock had been inclined to appreciate cold temperatures or terrains whatsoever, he would have been almost in awe at the landscape that spread out before them: a sweeping panorama that spread out in all directions, a large forest of wide, austere trees, holding majestic sway until the mountains jutted in from the distance, all snow-capped and blue, and everywhere else: white. 

It cloaked each evergreen needle individually, sat thick on the ground, clung like pale moss to the damp black bark of the trees, and there was a peculiar type of silence that Spock had never experienced before. The snow was muffling the world, and it was lovely in an eerie, sharp way. 

A path had been tramped into the snow by numerous tracks, and a few yards away, underneath snowy shade of a massive pine tree, three people waited: the Jadis embassy, the Starfleet ambassador among them. They were all wrapped in heavy blue cloaks, with hoods pulled up around their dark heads, golden eyes glinting. Beyond them, above even the tallest of the trees, the city speared the sky, glistening blindingly.

Spock was mentally running through the traditional greeting of the Jadis people when the leader, a woman with cloudy black hair cropped close around her head, threw back her hood and walked forward without her companions, her face alight with something like delight—her skin shone even darker than Nyota’s, and it gleamed against the white of the snow. 

Spock had a moment to be baffled before Jim strode forward and let her fling her arms around him, chuckling. 

Spock blinked. Every muscle in his body hardened, and it wasn’t because of the cold. He exchanged a purposefully blank look with Chekov, but Chekov’s openly confused face showed that Chekov knew no more than he. 

Spock turned back to face Jim and the woman he now recognized as Ambassador Bilquis from the information database. He stared at them, waiting coldly, and knew that his eyes were as frigid as the landscape around him. 

“James Kirk,” said Ambassador Bilquis fondly, framing his face with slender hands, “let me look at that face.”

“Q, you got a haircut,” Jim replied, touching the feature in question. Spock’s jaw felt like a steel spring, clenched and coiled. 

She grinned, wolfish and lovely. “You got a ship." 

“Gorgeous, isn’t she?” Jim’s smile was as blinding as the snow around him as he flung his head back to catch a faint glimpse of his ship in the jagged sky visible to them. “Course, you should see her up close. Breathtaking.”

“Still like a kid at Christmas with those stars up there, aren’t you.” Bilquis rolled her eyes. “All right. We’re being rude. Come and introduce me to your First and this darling young man here.” 

She had turned that smile on Spock and Chekov, and Spock stared back, so cold and frigidly that the smile, instead of faltering, became something more calculating.

Jim met Spock’s eyes. He tilted his head, looking momentarily startled, before lifting his eyebrows questioningly. 

Spock merely stared back, then returned his gaze to Bilquis. 

Chekov was bright red at having an endearment directed at him from a stranger. He stammered through his introduction while Bilquis laughed delightedly.

Spock, somehow, found that he was capable of desiring this mission to be over even more. He kept watching Bilquis, refusing to meet Jim’s repeated, confused looks. 

When Bilquis moved over to him, he greeted her with a single word: “Ambassador.”

Jim’s eyes narrowed at him over her head. 

Bilquis’ smile remained on her face, cool and impersonal. “Boys. If you’ll follow me.”

As she led the way back to her companions, Jim pressed his shoulder into Spock’s as they walked and said, “What?" 

“I am unsure of the nature as to what you are referring to." 

“Spock. What.”

“You are acquainted with Ambassador Bilquis?”

“Yes, I _ told _ you that. Are you mad about that? _ ” _

“I am not experiencing anger.”

“That’s some bullshit, you know you have a look you get when you’re peeved about something.”

“Once again, I am unsure as to what you are referring to." 

“It’s that look. Right there.”

“Coming, kids?” Ambassador Bilquis called breezily. Her two companions had taken up position on either side of her—almost like bodyguards, Spock noticed. 

“We went to school at the same time, we were together once,” said Jim dismissively. “Spock, what’s the source of this planet’s wealth?”

Spock blinked. Blinked again. 

Trying to process several channels of information at once, he said haltingly, “Their tremendous quantities of valuable stones. Before this ice age, there was a period of volcanic activity that created immense stores of all manner of precious jewels, and the Jadis people are experts at mining and setting them.” 

Spock fought the bizarre urge to ask Jim what, specifically, “together” meant. He was having a difficult time fathoming precisely _ why _ he wanted to know—he’d seen Jim flirt with other women in passing—but that phrase coupled with their familiar and tactual greeting made something inside of Spock _ move _uncomfortably. 

“So this planet is basically a giant treasure chest.”

“.....something of the sort.” 

Jim was looking around at the vast snow-filled landscape when he said, “Any criminal space activity around here lately?”

“None at all." 

Jim glanced at him, then squinted. “Since when?”

“Over a decade,” answered Spock. “I did not check beyond that because I deemed it irrelevant to our current situation.”

Jim’s eyes narrowed further. “Klingon warfare came pretty close to around here not too long ago. Maybe five years. That should have been reported; it was on other planets in this sector. You’re telling me it wasn’t?”

Spock flicked dutifully back through his memory, though he already knew the answer. “No suspicious activity has been reported in the vicinity of this planet at all.”

“They’re not that far away from danger zones. This isn’t even a peaceful part of the galaxy.”

“I, too, found it odd, but reasoned that perhaps they did not find any tactical relevance in reporting it.” 

Jim stared around the frozen landscape, trees spiking the sky. Spock was abruptly very aware of the heavy silence that lay around them. “Well,” said Jim, after a moment, “I find _ that _suspicious.” 

Spock was once more reminded that while he viewed technological databases as a solid foundation for any mission, Jim viewed them as corruptible information—due to their differed earlier life experiences, Spock had no doubt. 

After a moment, Jim called, “Mr. Chekov?” 

Chekov, who had been chattering happily to an indulgent Bilquis, paused long enough to say, “Yes, Captain?”

“Status report. Get the Enterprise on the com, please.”

If Spock were human, he might have been able to find it within himself to shiver from trepidation instead of cold when Chekov’s face turned first confused, then concerned.

“Uh. Sorry, sir. Communications have been halted, I cannot reach the ship.”

“_ Shit,” _muttered Jim. “Bilquis? What’s going on?” 

Bilquis had stopped a few feet in front of them, and she and her companions were watching Chekov, Spock, and Jim.

“Sometimes our weather interferes with communication,” she said calmly, but Spock watched as her eyes swept the snow-covered trees carefully. Her companions were gripping something under their cloaks: weapons. 

Why were they so readily armed if, as they reported, they had no enemies to contend with? 

“Do _ you _ think it’s the weather?” Jim’s voice was just as calm as hers, but Spock could hear the tension boiling underneath. 

There was a flash of something to his left, and Spock had time to think _ Jim _ before a shock of blinding fire threw him backwards.


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


______________________________________________________________

_ “We are only human. The gods have fashioned us for love...  _

_ It is our great glory _

_ and our greatest tragedy.”  _

_ -George R. R. Martin _

______________________________________________________________

Jim choked for air for a solid seven seconds before he could force it back into his stunned lungs, staring up at the snow-pale sky, the jagged snow-heavy branches. God, there was so much snow, the world was sagging under the weight of it all— 

Grunting with effort, he rolled over, yelling “ _ Spock!”  _ before the rest of his brain gathered its crumpled thoughts and tried to put them into a more coherent line. 

Another blinding flash of light seared across Jim’s eyes, but this time, the deafening explosion was a few yards away. There was a strangled cry, a muffled, crunching thud: the sound of something heavy hitting the snow-covered ground. 

He heard Spock say something in a strained voice, saw him roll over in the snow, his eyes searching until they landed on Jim’s face. There was a cut across his face, oozing green blood.

That blood shocked Jim into action, sending him staggering to his feet before his body had taken stock of whether or not it still worked. Acrid smoke poured from the charred gash the blast had ripped through the snow, sparks flying across the blinding white. Jim’s watering eyes felt as though they were freezing shut as he squinted, trying desperately to see Chekov and Bilquis as he made his way to Spock.

“Chekov?” he yelled. “ _ Chekov?”  _ He fell into the snow next to Spock, and almost without realizing it, his hands grappled with Spock’s coat, looking for holes in it, for signs of serious injury, blood anywhere else—

“Captain, I am well.” Spock’s voice was urgent. “Are you—”

Something cut him off, but it was not another explosion.

The sound was high, strange. Chittering. Jim’s mind, searching for an explanation, landed bizarrely, confusedly, on a centipede: it was the sound a centipede’s legs would have made—if it were much, much larger—if its legs were striking a hard surface in rippling, chilling succession. 

Jim stared into the forest. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Spock had gone very still.

Then, between the trees, visible to them for an instant, a dark figure appeared. It looked humanoid, with two arms and legs, but its gait was too rolling, too quick, too stiff—like something that looked like a human had learned to walk by only observing humans, but had never quite gotten the hang of it; correct in theory, but very wrong in actuality. 

Between one blink and the next, it vanished. Something moved out of the corner of his eye, another black shadow, but when Jim snapped his head around to look, there was nothing there—but Jim had an eerie, cold feeling that there  _ had  _ been something there a fraction of a second ago, something that walked just a little askew. The silence descended again, oppressive and loaded. 

Jim and Spock stared at the forest until a shout cut through the awful quiet. 

“Captain!  _ Captain!”  _

Thank  _ God.  _

Jim started and looked around. Spock’s muscles were hard and tense under his hands. Trying once again to see through the smoke, he yelled, “Chekov, can you get through the—”

Before he could finish his question, Bilquis ran through the smoke and fire, and Jim’s brain took another second to realize what looked like a misshapen creature moving next to her was Chekov, face wrapped in Bilquis’ thick blue cloak, protecting his face. When he ripped the cloak off, Jim nearly sagged with relief to see that he was unharmed. 

“The others,” said Jim, looking behind her, “where are—”

“Dead.” Bilquis’ voice was flat, her eyes hard and unreadable: solid gold, immovable and emotionless; there was no sign of her easy, purring laughter. “We need to get back to the city, and we need to go  _ now.”  _

“Ambassador, if we continue on our present course, there is a ninety-two-point-six percent chance that we will be fired on again and sustain even more casualties,” said Spock—his voice was slightly faster, slightly rougher, and Jim realized Spock’s left hand was gripping his right arm. Spock had seen what Jim had seen, and while they were out of sight, whatever it was that was out there was not  _ gone.  _

“They won’t.” Bilquis pushed Chekov into the middle of their uneven circle, a phaser in her hands—and it was set to kill.

Motherfucking shit. This was  _ not  _ supposed to be this dangerous, and now Jim had no way to get his team safely back to the Enterprise. 

He knew Bones would talk about how he was  _ absolutely right  _ for weeks once they got back to the Enterprise. 

If they got back. 

Jim grabbed at Spock’s shoulder roughly before hauling himself to his feet. “Q. What the  _ hell  _ is out there?”

“They won’t keep firing,” insisted Bilquis instead of answering, her phaser still held at ready despite her words. “They kill some of us and leave. Cowards,” she added, her voice suddenly seething with venom. “These attacks have been happening for weeks.”

“If you have experienced a number of attacks previous to this, I fail to understand why you have allowed a peaceful landing party to arrive here with no warning,” said Spock sharply, standing next to Jim. 

“Bilquis,  _ what was that out there?”  _ Jim’s voice was cutting, forceful. 

Bilquis stared at him for a long moment. “It didn’t move right, did it.”

Jim stared at her. A cold, viscous feeling slid down his spine. 

Her face twitched into something like fear before smoothing out again. “They are called the Lorvey,” she said finally, after a long moment. Smoke whipped and moved behind her. “They’re—well. We don’t know, actually. We’ve been seeing them for weeks.”

“Yet there was no report of them.” Spock’s eyes were steely. 

“My people are proud,” said Bilquis, but before Jim could press her for an explanation, she looked at him, and the solid gold melted: she looked abruptly almost desperate, and tired. “Jim. I would never. To the best of our knowledge they’re attracted to our wealth. I swear I did not know this would happen. This is the safest route, they have  _ never  _ been this bold before, and Malik assured—” she cut off, and her head made an aborted, strained movement, as though she was about to look for someone...someone who would no longer be there. 

Her fallen comrades. Jim felt less betrayed, but no less angry. 

“Q,” he said, gentler. “I need to get my crew out of here. How do we get back without running into any more of those…things?”

“The city is our best bet,” she said again, her fingers clenched on her phaser. “It’s our most secure location; you will be safe there while you try and re-establish communication with your crew.”

Jim looked at Spock, weighing his options. From Spock’s face, he could tell that Spock was reluctant to go with the idea, and was also aware that it was pretty much their only choice. 

Spock tilted his head, and Jim said, “Chekov. You good? You okay?” 

Chekov looked around, and Jim felt a pang: he still looked scared. He was just a kid, for fuck’s sake. “Uh, yes sir,” said Chekov hastily, noticing Jim’s scrutiny.

Jim softened his gaze, gripping Chekov’s shoulder. “We’re gonna be okay, Chekov.” Giving it a firm shake, he turned him forward, then pulled out his own phaser. He glanced over and was unsurprised to find Spock had his out as well. 

They exchanged a nod, and Bilquis said, “Let’s go, kids,” exactly how she had before, but this time it was as heavy and cold as the snow, and this time she walked past two of her dead countrymen. Her head made that aborted motion again, as though she were fiercely and firmly stopping herself from looking, or perhaps just shaking her head. 

Spock and Jim pressed their shoulders together, and they moved forward. Behind them, the monochromatic landscape leaked red. 

As it turned out, they made it to the city just fine. It took the better part of an hour, and the tension in Jim’s frame ratcheted up with every step, and with every tiny noise, both Spock and Jim’s phasers came up, but they made it with no further attacks. 

“Fuck,” Jim muttered, with feeling. The gates slid shut behind them. 

“Hm,” said Spock, which was Spock’s way of agreeing with him. Jim slapped at Chekov’s shoulder in front of him. 

“Stay here.” Bilquis’ voice was still clipped and short, and she strode off into the city. 

Jim was aware that Bilquis herself had staggering amounts of money; she had been born into it, which was part of the reason why she’d been given her substantial education. He knew of the household her family held in this precise city, a palace-sized estate overlooking the river she’d spoken of often; he knew of the blocks of offices her father held on the more populated space stations; he knew of the lodges they kept on Earth as a tribute to their human mother, now dead fifteen years—he’d known the Bilquis came from wealth, it was just that it was hitting him that perhaps it wasn’t just her  _ family,  _ it was her  _ planet.  _

The buildings of the city were ice-blue, all made of the same peculiar crystalline marble, nearly translucent in the thinner places, twisting in intricate spires into the white sky. Silver inlay gleamed over doorways, twined around windows, and everywhere, there were gems. As people traipsed in their thick, soft blue and green cloaks through the gigantic squares of the city, Jim stared at the wealth worked into their everyday lives: diamond necklaces hung from the necks of people simply out to do their shopping, rings glittered on everyone’s hands, rubies the size of bird’s eggs shimmered in golden flowers decorating the caryatids hanging out under rooftops, rose water opals glistened on balcony railings. 

Jim watched it all, slightly dumbfounded, before he felt Spock shift closer to him. “Have you been here previously?” Spock’s voice was low in Jim’s ear, his breath warm across Jim’s throat. 

“No.” Jim stared around at the marketplace, feeling the buzz of energy rippling off the Jadis people; if they couldn’t figure out what was causing this unexplained heat source, this could all end. Very quickly. “She asked me to, once…”

Jim felt Spock’s gaze go razor-sharp against the side of his head, and he blinked back into Spock’s gaze, puzzled once again at the surprising animosity he found in those dark eyes. 

“Are you actually gonna tell me what’s—”

Bilquis returned before Jim could demand an explanation. There were four soldiers with her, strapped into blue and slate-gray armor. The four marched past them, out the gates, and vanished. 

The bodies, thought Jim. He’d been wondering. He couldn’t stand it when someone wasn’t properly buried—it was the fucking least anyone could do, and sometimes they couldn’t even get around to that. God, he hated being back in a war zone. All this goddamn wealth and they couldn’t save people from dying. 

Bilquis watched them go in silence before turning her gold eyes on them. “Come with me. It will be warmer inside, and we have sensors for you to examine. My sister will show you her work,” she added to Chekov, “as she has been the one trying to hunt down the heat signature.”

Chekov nodded, and they followed Bilquis further into Jadis. 

It wasn’t snowing, Jim noticed, and he knew that this was a bad thing. 

________

They still couldn’t get in touch with the Enterprise. Bones was gonna kill him. 

“Zere is something in this atmosphere,” explained Chekov apologetically. Bilquis had pushed her way into their communications center and basically given Chekov free reign of the place, pointing him toward various technical equipment he could use to trace the heat signal. Yara, Bilquis’ more cheerful sister, who had the same arched brows and regal cheekbones as Bilquis, had immediately begun taking Chekov’s work and feeding it into the appropriate machines. The elegance of her face was somewhat undermined by the fact that she had a slight puffball of a nose, which she kept tapping at absentmindedly, the lights winking across the net of diamonds she had in her hair. 

“It...could be the storms, but could be something else.”

Yara, who was sitting at another screen with her fingers lightly tripping across it, chirped, “The constant storms make it very easy for purposeful interference, Captain Kirk. There are many electrical surges.”

As for the unknown heat source— “There is a signal on this planet, that is for certain, they were correct about this.” He gestured to Yara, who nodded. “It has a very definitive trace, and I can possibly be tracking that, but...this snow. It is this snow.” Chekov waved his hands around irritably. “Whoever designed this used the snow to their advantage. They are using it to confuse the signal and make tracing it wery wery difficult.”

“And the...Lorvey? Those things we saw?” Jim looked up.

Yara’s face creased into a delicate frown as she exchanged a look with Bilquis. “It’s a terrible shame you ran into them on your first day here, Captain Kirk. They are a nuisance that surfaced a little while ago and I am sorry it hangs over your head. They cannot get into the city, though, so do not be troubled.”

Somehow, Jim was still troubled. Seeing a shadowed figure whose limbs all moved at different tempos did that to a person. 

Standing back, Spock and Jim put their heads together. “Since we cannot reach our ship and we have resources here, it is to our best interest to move forward with the prime directive,” said Spock thoughtfully. “If we can find this heat source and stop its negative effects on this planet, or at least this colony, then our mission will have been counted a success. We are not a war vessel; we cannot hope to assist in a war in any way.”

Jim watched snow flurries whip past the window next to them, wind tussling them over rooftops. “And if we can’t communicate with our ship?”

“You have both a loyal and a capable crew,” Spock replied, the picture of calm confidence: the lighthouse to any of Jim’s storms. “We will not be stranded on this planet for long.” 

Jim looked up at Spock and gave himself a moment to look at his First Officer’s face for a little too long; he was guilty of this while he was absolutely sure Spock was thinking about something else, so those keen eyes wouldn’t send a question his way that he couldn’t answer. 

“Hm. Good thing, too. You’re warm enough?” Jim checked; he was fully aware of how much Spock loathed the cold, and this alone was enough to make him want to leave Spock in this heated building and go trekking off into the snow alone. 

Spock’s eyebrows drew together; it was as close as he got to scowling. “I am perfectly capable of monitoring and regulating my own temperature,” he said stiffly.

Jim let out an amused breath and rolled his eyes. “You could regulate your temperature better in here,” he hinted.

“Captain, I will not allow you to go searching for a potentially dangerous source of an unknown heat signature in a hostile environment,” said Spock firmly, immediately guessing at his intentions. 

“I’ll remind you of that statement when it’s dark and we’re  _ camping  _ out in that frozen tundra.”

Spock’s mouth pinched, and Jim smacked his shoulder before returning to Chekov to see how his wunderkind was progressing. 

Nicely, it turned out. Chekov had successfully separated the heat signature of the weird fuckall heat thingie from the heat signatures given off by the man-made and naturally occurring electricity in Jadis. He had tracked it to about twenty miles off.

“You’re a genius, Chekov,” said Jim solemnly, and Chekov beamed. Then his face fell again.

“But, Captain, I still cannot get in touch with ze Enterprise.”

Jim exchanged a look with Spock. “Oh, they’ll be down here, Chekov, don’t worry. You’ll hear Bones’ shouts for miles.”

Chekov laughed a little at that, and Jim ruffled his hair. 

“Twenty miles?” Spock lifted an eyebrow. “That distance seems bizarrely close. You have not tracked it?” He turned to Bilquis and Yara with all the judgment of a brilliant and supercilious Vulcan, and Jim winced inwardly. He didn’t envy them being on the receiving end of that look, whose full power had made even the most experienced scientists quail in their seats. 

Bilquis, however, met his eyes defiantly. There were very few things Bilquis was afraid of, and that was what had drawn Jim to her in the first place: that fearlessness, the boldness. She hadn’t been afraid of him, either, or his flighty way of loving. 

He wondered if she could see that he’d learned. That his love had permanence now, and pain.

“Which way, little one?” she asked Chekov.

“Um…” he looked at his charts. “Dat...no, dis way.”

He pointed, straight north. 

Bilquis lifted elegantly curved eyebrow, and came to look, her golden bracelets clinking together as she bent over to examine the screens. She exchanged a look with Yara, whose face was now twisted with obvious anxiety.

“You truly are a wonder,” Bilquis said absently, looking at the nearly indecipherable maths and numbers Chekov had concocted to pinpoint that tiny invisible trail. “And you are certain it is north?”

“Uh, yes, madam.”

She straightened, her full mouth pressed into a grim line. “That is why, Commander Spock,” she said, meeting Spock’s eyes directly again: a challenge. “That is the way of Tungsted, the Troll’s Bridge. Nobody goes there.”

“Well, somebody did,” said Jim, looking over Chekov’s shoulder at his readings. “Twenty miles, but it looks like it’s buried underneath something. What does that terrain look like?”

Bilquis looked unhappily at Jim. “If my people’s lifestyle was not in danger,” she said at last, “if this city itself was not on the verge of crumbling, I would send you back to your ship. My people are not like me. Our mother was a Terran,” she explained to Spock and Chekov, gesturing to Yara, “which allows us to travel, to exist in warmer climates. My people are not thus. They cannot exist in anything other than very cold temperatures—their lungs are not made for it, nor any part of their physique. Already the surrounding villages are filled with sickness, the children—the children cannot breathe, Jim.” Her golden eyes pierced him to his soul. “The ice is cracking, there is  _ water  _ on the surface for the first time in thousands of years. Even if this  _ thing  _ is only affecting a radius of sixty or seventy miles, it’s hit the most populated area. Hundreds if not thousands will die if this keeps up.”

“Your people cannot go close to the source,” Spock surmised. “The closer you get, the sicker you all would be.”

Bilquis nodded. “Except me. So I’ll go with you, to be your guide.” 

Yara looked up. “Sister,” she said, a warning note in her voice.

Bilquis looked at Yara. “It is their only chance.”

Yara’s mouth seamed into a thin line, her golden eyes flashing, but she didn’t argue. When she turned back to her screen, her fingers, flashing with thread-thin rings, stabbed out a staccato rhythm of anger. 

Bilquis turned back to Spock, Chekov, and Jim. “It’ll be very dangerous,” she said, “what with the surface of the planet being this unstable. And the Troll’s Bridge—” she looked back at Chekov’s readings. “The Troll’s Bridge is no joke, Commander. That place is horrible even in the best of circumstances. Our people are forbidden to go there because of the sheer number of accidental deaths.” 

“Is it in fact a bridge?” Jim wanted to know. 

Bilquis looked at him grimly. “Of a sorts,” she said. “It’s a labyrinth—there’s a maze of ice tunnels layered on top of each other. The ice looks fine, but in reality, one wrong step could send you plunging hundreds of feet down.”

“So it’s a perfect hiding spot for a big giant heat generator,” concluded Jim, crossing his arms.

“Made all the more dangerous by the fact that the heat will be compromising even more of the ice.” Spock was now examining Chekov’s diagrams intently. “It has to be of a significant size, or its radius would not extend this far. It may have even burrowed itself further down into the planet’s surface.”

“I can attempt to discover its precise location, but until I have direct contact or a more detailed understanding of what it is, I cannot tell you how to shut it down,” said Chekov, his fingers flicking over keys. “It must be a heat generator, as Mr. Spock says, of significant size. My guess is that it is powered from the inside, so is a matter of getting inside the mechanism and cutting it off from there.”

“Snip, snip,” concluded Jim.

Spock quirked an eyebrow at him, and Jim shrugged back. “You got a really big pair of pliers?” he asked Bilquis, who rolled her eyes at him. 

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you,” she said, and it could have been an accusation, it could have been a love sonnet. 

He smiled innocently at her. “Nope.”

_______

After Chekov had roped several serious technicians into helping him pinpoint an exact location, they let the scanners run. The equations Chekov had programmed into them took the technicians the better part of three quarters of an hour to comb through. 

The technicians, unlike Bilquis and Yara, had a tinge of gray to their skins. Every so often, one of them would break into a barking coughing fit, deep and hacking. One of the elder ones had an alarmingly wet sound to his. Spock and Jim locked solemn eyes for a long moment after the elder had finished, pressing one hand to his chest as though to alleviate some hidden pressure. Bilquis, who Jim remembered had finished her medical emphasis before rerouting to become an ambassador, jogged over to say a quiet word, administer a hypo, and sit him down. 

Neither Jim nor Spock (despite his previous baffling annoyance) were willing to leave a planet with its people in danger, and Jim could almost feel Spock’s reluctant kinship to the planet’s situation: a lifestyle in danger, a people under threat. It was uncomfortable, and with Bilquis admitting to her half-human parentage, it was all beginning to feel a little like something was fucking with them, and not in a subtle way, either.

Thanks, life.  _ Fuck  _ you. 

Bilquis insisted that they head out in the morning. They had a dangerous trek ahead of them, and night fell early on her planet. It was better to start just before the sun rose, so they would have peak visibility when they came to the most dangerous part of Tungsted. 

Frankly, Jim was extremely wary of the whole ice-fuckery situation. He had already firmly ordered Chekov to stay put and monitor their status from afar, but he knew no amount of ordering would make Spock stay here without Jim. Spock had just given him a withering look when he’d turned from giving orders to Chekov, and Jim had wisely decided to pick his battles. 

“I still don’t like that we can’t talk to the Enterprise, but at this point, there’s not much we can do,” said Jim to Spock after night had fallen. They’d spent the past few hours gathering supplies for their trek, and now they were sitting on the piles of velvet cushions heaped into a sunken down section. It was a large suite, beds located on either side, and mercifully heated enough that even Spock was comfortable enough to shed his outer layers. Bilquis had ordered multiple carpets to be brought in for more warmth, and extra woolen blankets piled onto their beds. 

As to the shared room situation, Bilquis had simply told Chekov where his quarters were, somewhere down the hallway, and then asked if Spock and Jim were all right together so as to be closer to Chekov. As Spock had not objected, Jim hadn’t either. 

Even if it did make him feel like a bit of a masochist. God. One day he was going to be able to stop this, he told himself, one day he wouldn’t— 

Yeah. Sure. One day when the universe twisted out of existence, and every star was ashes and dust. And it was doubtful, even then. Love was fucked up like that. It went on, even when there was nothing left, nothing at all. 

“We cannot leave these people in peril, something that I know you agree with.” Spock picked his way over the carpets, elegantly keeping his tea aloft. “Even if we could reach the Enterprise, you would not return without first giving these people aid.” 

Jim glanced at him, sinking further into his cushions, pushing at his shoulder. “You know I wouldn’t. Hopefully we can find the generator and blow it up or something and get out.”

Spock settled fluidly on the ground, crossing his legs neatly without spilling a single drop of tea. “Given our knowledge of the precarious nature of the natural formation of Tungsted, I would recommend we leave the explosives out of the situation.”

Jim smirked. “We’ll just run away really fast.” 

Spock gave him a look, his left eyebrow expressing just what he thought about that idea, and Jim snorted, shifting his shoulder again. 

Spock’s eyes zeroed in on the movement. “Is your right shoulder troubling you?”

Jim stopped moving. “...No,” he said, and both of them could tell it was a lie. “Not a lot. I think I hit it…”

Spock was standing back up before Jim could convince him that it was  _ fine.  _ “Spock, you’re as bad as Bones. It’s bruised, at most.”

“Lift up your shirt.”

“Spock, don’t tell me to take off my shirt—”

The door comm blipped at them. Spock’s slender fingers hovered in the air over Jim’s shoulder, then fell away. The air felt charged.

Jim couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed, decided not to decide, and went to get the door.

Bilquis was on the other side, her hands clasped in front of her, the thin gold hoops in her ears twinkling in the light from the lamps. Colored sapphires winked on her wrists, in her hair. 

“Captain,” she said, and nodded to Spock behind Jim. “Commander. Captain Kirk, I wondered if I might borrow you for a moment?”

Jim could feel something icy radiating from Spock behind him, and he purposefully didn’t look. “Do I need a coat for this excursion?” 

“No,” said Bilquis, smiling slightly. “Nothing dangerous.”

“Shame,” said Jim. He didn’t look at Spock when he called behind him, “Be back later.” 

He wished it didn’t feel like a bizarre kind of dishonesty when he shut the door behind him.

In front of him Bilquis glowed. She smiled, softer, less tigerlike, gentler. He remembered being so surprised the first time she’d shown him that smile, twisted in the sheets in a room in Starfleet Academy, when tenderness was a gift he still accepted and gave, and it wasn’t something he had resigned himself to being barred from forever. 

He had a visceral, soft-lit memory of Spock’s mouth curving slightly, just before Nyota put hers on top of it, and he clenched his teeth around it, tried to swallow it whole. It wouldn’t go. The memory, probably such a fond one for the people actually involved, thrashed in his throat. 

God, he so wished everything didn’t make him think about Spock. He’d once seen constellations everywhere, tangles of them in horizons, moons in soup spoons, planets tipping on buildings, dreamy nebulas in storm clouds. Now he just saw Spock’s silt-dark eyes, memorized to the letter—and it felt like a betrayal of stars. So many of them, and still he starved. 

“Walk with me?” said Bilquis from the present, and he smiled at her. 

“Of course,” he said, and let her take his hand. 


	3. Chapter 3

_ _______________________________________________________________ _

_ How astonishing it is that language can almost mean—  _

_ And frightening that it does not quite.  _

_ Love, we say. _

_ God, we say. _

_ And the words get it all wrong.  _

_ —Jack Gilbert  _

_________________________________________________________________

  
  


She took him to the windows, a solid wall of them, where they could see the faint glow of the crystal city, the faintly luminescent blanket of snow that covered the world. She asked him to tell her about the years in space, and he did. He made good work of the story of Kahn, omitting his own demise; the shitfest of Altamid, the sickening death of his own ship—but Jim Kirk was a good storyteller, and he made the people of his own life into characters, and the devastation of the events into heroic tales, in which there were definitive winners, where good triumphed, morals were prevalent, and nobody was tired or beaten or numb at the end. 

Bilquis was a good audience. She laughed at all the right parts, ridiculed him when the stories became too cartoonish, prodded him for forgotten details, treated the stories of his crew like old friends. Her smiles were flashing, quicksilver, her body sinuous among the cushions of the couch, and he knew he could touch, that he was being invited, but most of all he knew that he could have this. 

It had been easy, he remembered. This had once been easy, and he had once reveled in easy. He had once been so content with this. It was just that now, he knew what the other thing was like—now, he knew where his silences were secure, where he was understood to the letter. And maybe that sentence already had the ending built into it, but there was something so addicting about feeling like a complete person in the company of one somebody.

So he told the story, and he laced his story with that one somebody, because really—in space, in with the constellations and the bone-sunk love of the stars, there was Jim Kirk, and next to Jim Kirk there was a Vulcan named Spock. 

And Bilquis, who had easily torn through her exams, devoured an education, and now sat poised on the brink of a bright and successful life, did not miss it. 

At the end, when Jim had ended his telling but not the story, she said, “Jim. You were planning on leaving, weren’t you? A vice-admiral.”

He snorted self-deprecatingly, leaning his chin on his elbow. “Heard about that one, huh?”

“I have my sources. But something changed your mind, and even the best of my charms couldn’t find that one.”

Jim glanced out, where he could see patches of starlight through the wispy clouds. One, he fancied, brighter than all the others. “You know I’ve always loved space, Q, I couldn’t give that up, no matter how cushy that vice-admiral chair was.”

“Hm.” She leaned back, tucking her legs up against her chest. “Wanna tell me the other part now, Kirk?”

He glanced at her. “Other part?” he said, but he knew he’d been found out. 

Her golden eyes, hooded now, searched his face, her gaze piercing. “Those stars are beautiful, but they’re cold, darling,” she said quietly, and there was that softness again: she could see him. “So who’s loving you up there, Jim Kirk? Who’s keeping you warm up there?”

He had to sit and choke for a minute, forcing things back down his throat, lash them to his ribcage again, like sails that would drag his heart out to sea if he wasn’t careful. He smiled, but he knew it wasn’t warm, or reassuring. “You know how I am with that, Q. You of all people know that.”

“I sure do, Jim,” she said. “And you could let me know again.”

“Q,” he said, but she stopped him, she held up a calm finger. 

“I’m not asking for an absolution, Jim,” she said. “Not a commitment, not a promise. I’m just saying—if one day that vice-admiral chair finally looks soft enough for you, I’m down here, and not up there.” 

She at least knew that part of him. “It won’t, Q, so don’t get your hopes up.” He was gentle now, breaking it to her soft, giving her his blue gaze. “It’s a full galaxy out there, you know.”

He didn’t tell her he’d already been through this. That something had already pushed him enough to apply for the position in the first place said how far down that path he’d already gone, and the fact that he’d climbed back up to his ship said that he wouldn’t drop down out of space again anytime soon. He didn’t tell her that he’d already tried antidotes for the other thing, too, tried doing exactly what she was propositioning —tried with silky-haired Carol Marcus, who’d never held a candle to the way Spock understood him; clever and witty Finn Xi who had cheerfully dumped Jim after informing him laughingly that Jim could never pay attention to “anyone but his First Officer;” sweet loving red-lipped Zoe di Angelo, who had genuinely no idea about Spock but who gravely told him she was leaving because she could never be with anyone who was in love with somebody else; the dark-eyed, charming doctor called Laurie who’d been nice in bed and sang sweetly in the shower but who saw right through the way Jim and Spock were always glued to each other, who’d said gently, his eyes unoffended, “I think we’d better stop before you try to convince  _ yourself  _ you want this.”

Bilquis wasn’t deterred. “Maybe so,” she allowed, “but it’s pretty empty from where you’re standing, I’d say.”

“See that, do you?” He sighed, sitting back. “You always saw too much.”

He didn’t say: I’d just see him when I looked at you. 

“You want something you might never have, Jimmy,” she said to him, and the way she said it made it calm and factual, made it almost seem like it didn’t have teeth. “It doesn’t always have to be a sky of full of endings.” 

He looked out to the stars, and there was the quirk of Spock’s eyebrow, the ghost of Spock’s tiny smile. “We love who we love, Q. Sucks, I guess.”

“Well.” She reached for him, and he ached for that simplicity, the uncomplicated lure of her hands. He let her, knowing she wouldn’t do more than touch the edges of his jaw, knowing that it was a kiss she wanted.

He gave it to her. He had so much to give that would never be taken that he might as well give this, because no matter how he wanted it to, it would never mean much. 

“You just might find your way back down to the ground, Jim Kirk,” she said to him, her voice on his lips, “I promise we all get there. It’s not so bad from down here.”

He smiled sadly. “You’re a hell of a view, Q.”

Her smile had a hint of fire again. “I know.”

When they kissed again, he tasted her fire on his tongue, and his own mouthful of sorrow.

_____

Spock pretended he was deep in meditation when Jim came back in, but he couldn’t deny that he was, indeed, relieved that Jim had come back at all. It had been a short enough excursion that they had had adequate time for a long conversation, but perhaps not anything else. 

Some part of him had been undeniably anxious that he wouldn’t see Bilquis and Jim until the next morning, which should not have been something he was even remotely concerned about. After all, the Captain was perfectly free to conduct his personal life as he saw fit. Spock had a personal relationship, after all—

Well. Perhaps not, if he was honest within himself.

He had realized upon examining the parameters of Nyota’s affections toward him that they were better suited as colleagues and friends then lovers. It had not once been so, but it was time to accept present circumstances and move forward with them. Inner balance would not come from dwelling on things had in the past. 

And Jim had come back, and was now burrowed under his covers, obviously having gone straight to sleep. Spock watched the easy rise and fall of Jim’s breathing for a few silent minutes before recognizing that he, too, needed several hours worth of sleep for his human blood. It would be a cold and treacherous excursion in the morning, and he needed to be at peak physical condition.

Reluctantly, he turned to his bed. 

______

Logically, he knew it was a nightmare, but he could never seem to get out of it once he was in it. His pristine memory, so useful in his science-chosen career, turned into an ugly, dark thing.

_ “Sir. You’d better get down here. Better hurry.” Scotty’s voice had dropped toward the end, nearly indecipherable, and so grave that Spock knew that something terrible had happened.  _

_ It’s a miracle, said the crewmembers. Spock’s entire body had grown cold, and he had the uniquely horrible experience of being possessed by complete terror for the first time in his life.  _

_ A miracle, they said. And maybe Jim Kirk had always been some type of miracle, but this—  _

_ He’d run. He’d already calculated in his head what had happened, because he knew Jim Kirk so precisely, so completely, and he knew the mechanics of their ship the same way. A misaligned warp core. A falling ship. A captain who would do anything, anything at all, to save and protect his crew, his family.  _

_ He already knew, therefore, that he was too late. He already knew it was futile, and his Vulcan logic said coldly that running would do exactly nothing at all, but his human side was screaming. _

_ Mr. Scott’s face, the shake of his head, solidified the numbers in his head. He knew Jim’s chances of survival, and they were an anomaly in science, a rarely seen conclusion, because the chances of survival were none at all. _

_ He went to the door, shaking his head at the numbers, as though he could shake off their absolute truth—the absolute truth of zero. _

_ “Open it.” His voice was ragged, almost unrecognizable. Please, he’d cried inwardly. Please.  _

_ “The decontamination process is not complete.” Scotty’s voice was thick with resigned pain, tears in his eyes. “You’d flood the whole compartment. The door’s locked, sir.”  _

_ Spock had, of course, known all of that. His Vulcan logic had already marched out Jim’s fate, already mapped out Jim’s last minutes. He already knew. He had already lost, the strings had already been snapped. But he wanted his miracle, then. He wanted to believe in miracles then. He would have settled for holding Jim’s hand. _

_ Don’t leave, he thought helplessly, foolishly, kneeling next to the glass, his shaking hand tapping at it to get Jim to look at him. Don’t leave. Not you.  _

_ He had felt like he was drowning when he heard Jim’s pained gasp as he reached up to pull the lever, shutting the door to the warp core chamber. It was pointless, obviously, it wouldn’t help him—and then Spock realized that Jim had done it so they could come get his body, when it was over. He was still making things easier for his crew, even when he was dying. _

_ Then there was nothing to do but wait for Jim to gasp out his last, wait for Jim to look up at him, meet his eyes with the effort of the doomed. Those blue eyes, so full of vitality and life, now on the edge of death: pained and skeletal. Spock felt it like a knife through his side.  _

_ He finally managed to whisper, “How’s our ship?” _

_ Spock’s hands were shaking so badly. Theirs. It had always been theirs, and they had saved it—and the cost was this. “Out of danger,” he said. He had successfully reigned in his agony, and his voice was gentle; this was the only thing he could give Jim now, and he wasn’t about to let his own emotions get in the way of that. “You saved the crew.”  _

_ Jim’s eyes started to slide closed, and Spock’s heart felt like it was ripping holes into itself. No, no,  _ no— 

_ At the last second, he pulled them back open: there was that famous will, battling to the last, making its final stand. “You used what he wanted against him,” he observed, slurred and tired. “That’s a nice move.” _

_ Spock managed, “It is what you would have done.” Of course it was. Spock knew him better than he knew himself. _

_ “And this,” said Jim, trying so hard to keep his eyes on Spock’s, “is what you would have done.” And Spock was reminded that he was, for perhaps the first time,  _ known.  _ Jim added, as an afterthought, “It was only logical.”  _

_ If Spock could have gone back in time through sheer force of will, he would have strangled himself. The needs of the many, he thought murderously, so shockingly scornful then of his people’s primary teaching, drowning as he was in this pain. The needs of the many killed Jim Kirk, and I will never forgive myself. _

_ Jim’s composure broke all at once, and he looked at Spock with a desperate pain that Spock had never seen before. “I’m scared, Spock,” he gasped, begging; and Spock’s desire to protect Jim from his own pain crumbled. “Help me not be.” _

_ Spock’s breathing stuttered, his throat burned. Jim whispered, almost to himself, “How do you choose not to feel?” _

_ He meant Spock’s own determination to face his own death with composure and calm. That detached impersonalness was as far from Spock as it could have possibly been; he had no idea how to grasp any of that when Jim was here, and Jim was in pain, and Jim was dying.  _

_ His voice cracking, Spock said, “I do not know. Right now I am failing.” There were tears on his face. He had not cried since he was a child, and now he was powerless to stop.  _

_ “I want you to know why I couldn’t let you die,” said Jim Kirk, and Spock realized with a horrible jolt that Jim was trying to comfort him, Jim was confessing something to him, giving him a last gift—  _

_ He had died anyway—  _

Spock tore from his blankets, a choking shock of air ripping from his lungs, his hands clawing at invisible glass. 

He had a moment of sheer disorientation, his brain trying to make sense of what was going on and put it back into its proper order—he lowered his hands immediately, fisted them in his blankets, evened his breathing—before a slurred, glazed voice said, “Spock?”

Spock whipped around, his eyes searching the gray room before landing on the bed across from him, swathed in blue. Jim’s golden head was half-raised, blinking muzzily, still partially asleep. 

Healthy. Breathing. Alive. 

Spock forced a breath between his teeth. “I apologize if I have woken you, Jim,” he said, lashing his voice so rigidly to his discipline that his tone didn’t waver at all. “It is nothing.”

More awake now, Jim shrugged off some of his blankets so he could sit up. “What’s wrong? You sounded like you couldn’t breathe for a second, is it the cold? What is it? What's wrong?” 

Spock shook his head, reigning in his compromised self-control. “Nothing to trouble yourself with. I rarely sleep as it is, so this is not cause for concern. I am well.”

Jim blinked. “You were sleeping? Was it a nightmare?”

Spock fluidly rose from his covers. The sleep he had gotten was adequate, even if it was a disturbed one. “Something of the sort,” he confessed shortly. “You may return to sleep, Jim.”

Jim frowned at him, searching his face. Spock looked back, and for once, he wasn’t sure what Jim was seeing. Jim had a unsettlingly profound way of seeing through even his blankest expressions. 

“Want me to get up with you?” 

Spock settled down again. He needed to meditate, to examine the memory for something he may have missed, something that continued to trouble him, to put it back in its rightful place: the past. Nothing about that memory could disturb him now, because Jim was in front of him, very alive. 

Spock looked at him again, reassuring himself again. “No, Jim. But I am...grateful for the offer.” 

Jim looked at him doubtfully, but obediently settled back down. Judging from the light, or lack thereof, Jim still had a few hours of sleep he could obtain before they started their journey. “Wake me up if you need to,” he ordered, pulling the covers back up to his chin. 

For a brief moment, Spock considered rescinding his rejection, but then dismissed the notion as foolish. Jim’s presence would only serve to give him comfort, and Jim needed sleep more than Spock needed that. 

“Thank you,” said Spock, and Jim hummed.

Before he began meditation in earnest, Spock watched the rise and fall of Jim’s breathing again, its rhythm and movement. Inexplicably, the tightness in his chest eased.

Jim said, “How big do you think this generator is going to be? Specifically.”

Spock continued staring at Jim, who hadn’t moved. After a moment, he said, “The diameter of such a device could be any size, but due to its damage, my estimate is that it could be anywhere from the size of this room to the size of this building.”

“So big enough to fit in. I mean, disabling it shouldn’t be too hard. Luckily it’s far enough from this city that destroying it shouldn’t cause a lot of damage to anywhere around here.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

“Do we think...those things...the Lorvey have a motive for this? I mean, sure, jewels and stuff, but this seems pretty drastic, if you think about it...it’s a pretty big civilization.” 

“Klingons and Romulans are not above performing such acts, and neither are a number of other criminals we have encountered,” said Spock thoughtfully. “However, you bring up an interesting point: this does seem to be a meticulously well-constructed plan.”

“What if it’s an inside job?”

“An interesting point that nevertheless lacks a key fact: motivation.”

“Well, just ‘cause we don’t  _ know  _ what kind of motivation…” He paused. “Spock, I’ve never heard of the Lorvey. Do you know what they are?”

Spock remembered keenly the movement of the shadowed silhouette, as though the bones had not been set straight—an unlikely phenomenon, considering it moved successfully, if not fluidly. “I have never come across any species that holds that name.”

“Why did they...move like that?” He sounded unsettled, something Spock could not blame him for. 

“I cannot answer that without more information, Jim.” 

“Well, hopefully we won’t run into more of  _ them.”  _

Jim kept talking to Spock about various points of their mission until the room lightened. Then he sat up, shucked off his covers, and said, “Well, better get packing.”

Spock watched the sunlight glance off Jim’s left iris, the momentary iridescence. His heart, bizarrely, suddenly felt very human, as though it had moved from his side to his chest. 

“Coming?” said Jim, and Spock thought,  _ Anywhere at all.  _

____

The first part of their journey could be made in a transporter, which at least was some small relief. It would take them as far as the Tlng Pass, which, according to Ambassador Bilquis, was right before the ice turned truly dangerous. That was when the Troll’s Bridge began.

Spock’s distaste was becoming more and more pronounced the longer they were on the planet. Jim could tell, because he laughed when he saw Spock’s expression looking out at the snow-capped city and the world beyond it. To Spock’s knowledge, his expression hadn’t changed, but he quirked an eyebrow at Jim nevertheless.

As he went down to the transporter, Jim having stayed behind to get some final data from Chekov, he heard a voice hissing: “You cannot possibly think this is a good idea. The Troll’s Bridge? Those Starfleet officers are going to die, and you with them.”

“And my choice is to what? Just to let them?” 

Spock stopped, then carefully concealed himself in a nearby alcove. He recognized Ambassador Bilquis’ bold, defensive voice, and the warning hiss as Yara, Bilquis’ sister. 

“You would let our aid walk to their deaths.”

“And you would leap after them!” exclaimed Yara. “What do I care for James Kirk or any of his associates? Your affections for him blind you to the reality—”

“My affections do no such thing. Our people are sick and nobody can go near this heat source except us, and we have sat around long enough.”

“As they remind us daily.” Yara’s voice was low. “We are bastards and half-breeds until they need us.”

“My bitterness isn’t going to get in the way of me helping innocent people, Yara!”

“Have you asked him to stay with you? Is that it? Have you offered him a chance to come back?”

Silence. If Spock’s stare had any heat, the wall across from him would have ceased to exist. 

Was that what they had spoken of the previous night? Jim wouldn’t. 

Except according to previous evidence… 

“That is none of your concern.” Bilquis’ voice, when she finally spoke, was flat and dangerous. “What I want with Jim Kirk has nothing to do with how I want to help my people. He can help, he has offered, and I will go with him. You cannot stop me.”

“Fine.” Yara’s voice took on an almost desperate edge. “Promise me this, then, Q: promise me you won’t go into...whatever it is that the heat source is, the  _ generator _ . Lead them to it and wait for them outside. I’m afraid of what it will do to you, so  _ please  _ don’t go in.”

“Very well,” Bilquis said. “Any more objections?”

“None that will do any good.”

“Well, then, if all goes well, I’ll be back by dinner. Don’t be too mean to that sweetheart while I’m gone.”

Spock heard footsteps, and he took himself out of his niche and continued walking, just in time to run into Bilquis.

“Commander Spock,” Bilquis greeted him. There was a choker of rubies laced around her neck, giving the gruesome impression that her throat had just been slit. “Just in time.” She looked over his shoulder, and her gaze grew warmer. “Hello, Jim. Ready?” 

Spock felt Jim’s hand on his shoulder for an instant. “Ready. Let’s go blow this shit up.”

Spock walked with Jim out onto the frozen landscape, where a transporter was loaded with their supplies—despite it being a relatively short distance, Spock learned that due to their incredibly unpredictable weather, the people of Jadis usually packed for at least two days when they ventured out anywhere. The precaution had saved many lives, but Spock hoped they would not have a use for the extra supplies. 

Somehow, as he watched Bilquis get into the transporter ahead of his captain, he wanted to expedite this mission even more than he had before, because he now he had a new, if irrational, concern: if Jim would remain captain when Bilquis had given him an offer of companionship. He still had no idea of the nature of their relationship, or how seriously Jim might take such an offer. 

Irrational. Illogical. And yet. 

Climbing into the transport, he settled himself down across from Jim, the seats close enough that their knees nearly overlapped. Bilquis would be driving, and it would take about an hour to get to Tungsted safely. 

“Everybody good back there?” Ambassador Bilquis called, and Jim gave the affirmative. The transporter began moving through the city, and Spock fought back a wince of displeasure when the cold air began hitting his face. 

Jim shifted around for a minute, and Spock watched him curiously. After a moment, he reached into his pack and pulled out his phaser. 

“If we get another bomb thrown at us we’re toast,” he observed, sitting back in his seat. 

“The area is relatively close to the city, and apparently dangerous to anyone who decides to enter the formation.”

“Yeah, but somebody  _ put it  _ there.” 

“It is unlikely that they stayed to guard it once it was activated,” Spock pointed out. “It would be highly unstable, as Lieutenant Chekov determined. It has already moved several yards from where it was originally planted due to the melting and cracking of the surrounding ice.” 

“And if they’re hanging out around it?”

“We meet it as it comes,” answered Spock reasonably. “We will only know once we arrive.”

Jim hummed reluctantly, crossing his arms, glancing outside the transporter. He said, “Well, these people don’t exactly try to  _ hide  _ their wealth, do they?”

Spock glanced outside. A pure gold statue of a roaring lion was front and center in the square, its diamond teeth sharp, its ruby eyes glimmering. A collar of massive black diamonds and opals sat heavy under its mane. 

“They do appear to be more ostentatious than is perhaps wise,” Spock observed coolly. “Perhaps there is nothing better to do as they cannot go outside much of the time.”

Spock was pleased when Jim let out a bark of laughter. “Did you just insinuate they have  _ too much time on their hands?”  _

“Creating pointless and extravagant ornamentation may be a symptom of this.”

“You’re so pretentious,” Jim chuckled, something like fondness in his tone. Some of the tension leaked out of his frame. They passed a stained glass window sparkling with what looked like over a thousand genuine gemstones, and Jim snorted. “No wonder they have creepy aliens preying on them. Jesus.”

Spock and Jim continued talking as the city passed before them. When the gates opened on the northern side, they fell silent, Jim turning around and craning his neck to see what lay beyond. 

There was a plain that stretched west and east for several miles, a vast expanse of unbroken white that was abruptly cut off on the east side by the forest, which continued on until the mountains in the distance. To the west, only white. 

Across the plain, to the north, which was where they were headed, was something that took Spock several minutes to realize was a convoluted, twisted mass of pure ice laying over a jagged black mountain. It gleamed menacingly in the sun, confusing and massive. The ice overlapped again and again, and there were gaping holes, huge cliff-edges, and sharply jutting pieces of sheer ice visible even from their position at the gates of the city. The earth dipped down just before it—the Tlng Pass, and Spock knew that was where the transporter would leave them to brave that. The Troll’s Bridge. 

“Well, shit,” said Jim conversationally.

“An understatement, I think,” Spock said, tactfully choosing not to mention the numbers that had been formulated in his head seconds earlier. The transporter began moving again, the snow kicking up on either side of them, heading towards Tungsted. 


	4. Chapter 4

_ __________________________________________________ _

_ Here’s my vow to you, and here’s all I believe: _

_ For you, I’ll stay invisible. _

_ I’ll be the air you breathe. _

_ _

_ -F. d. P. _

_ ____________________________________________________ _

“Shit,” said Jim again, with feeling. This time, Spock didn’t say anything, his keen eyes picking over their latest obstacle. They stood together looking out over the Tlng Pass; overhead, the Troll’s Bridge loomed, glittering menacingly, like a huge hive. Jim remembered the time his stepfather had accidentally kicked a hornet’s nest. It had looked a bit like the structure in front of him, and the association didn’t make him feel better. 

The issue was the land directly in front of them. They’d had to take a mildly steep hike up a rough black rock face, small, compact packs of supplies on their backs (just in case). They moved in a neat line with Bilquis in front, until Bilquis had stopped and muttered a curse. Jim and Spock had followed her to the rise and looked down, at which point Jim had said his own curse.

Down below, where the land had obviously been frozen and snowed over for centuries, the ice had become compromised from the heat generator sitting within a half mile of it. It had cracked, and underneath— 

“Hey, did you know that Tlng Pass is actually a river?” Jim asked Bilquis. “Or is that news to you too?”

A withering look was his only answer. 

Most of the river was still frozen, but directly in front of them, it had shattered into massive pieces, and a powerful rush of water was carrying them away, to the right of them. It was a direct cut across their path, blocking them neatly from the Troll’s Bridge. 

Just before the river, to their left, was a cliff face that connected to part of the Troll’s Bridge. Right up next to it, there was snow and ice, still intact, but the water rushed perilously close to it. It was the only way across, but Jim knew uncomfortably deep in his gut that the odds were against them. They had maybe ten yards to cross before solid ground again, away from the water, but every step would be uncertain. 

Jim had a second, even more uncomfortable feeling: the water couldn’t be coming from underneath the cliff face. The side of the cliff, which was completely coated in snow and icicles as big around as he was, had to be a huge, precariously frozen waterfall.

And that was the cliff face they would have to go right up against to cross. 

_ Fuck.  _

“If we wait any longer, it will become impassable,” said Spock. “We should go quickly if we are to make it across.”

“And how the fuck are we gonna get back if it continues to melt?” Jim wondered.

“On the way back we can cross over the top,” said Bilquis, pointing to the ridge at the top of the probably-waterfall, over their heads. “There is a path to get up there and pass over, but only from that side of the river. I’ll get word to my sister to send my people here. They can get us down from there—” she pointed to the cliffs up above their heads, “once we cross over.”

Spock and Jim glanced up at the cliffs overhead, then at each other. Spock lifted an eyebrow, and Jim muttered, “All right. Let’s go get this son of a bitch.”

They began the descent. 

Getting to the river wasn’t particularly hard; it was once they were there that Jim looked again at Spock, questioningly this time.

Spock simply nodded his affirmation, and so Jim nodded back: they were going to help this planet, so they were going to do this. 

The water next to them was loud and powerful, rushing away in frigid white rapids full of pieces of the frozen surface. Parts of the river were still ice, so they jutted out into the water in an uneven and fractured pattern, creating a dangerously pressured flow of water.

“I’ll go first,” said Jim, and even though his foot was the first to test the ice next to the river, Spock was just behind him on his right, Bilquis a half-step after them on the other side.

Jim didn’t want to do any sort of damage to the frozen waterfall to his left, so he tried to keep towards the middle of the narrow pass afforded to them. Sometimes his foot sank alarmingly, and he’d stop abruptly; the third time this happened, Spock actually seized his shoulder, and the fourth time, Spock didn’t let go. Jim wasn’t sure what that would do to their overall stability, and since he couldn’t decide if it was helping or hindering them as a unit he let Spock’s hand stay fisted in his coat. None of them said anything. It was as though they feared words would be a straight shot to their destruction. The silence was deafening, filled with only the frightening sound of the river and the hiss of moving ice. 

They made slow, tentative progress to the middle of the river. Then, when Jim stepped, there was an alarming crack, and a hissing spray of mist shot up from the fissure that had spiderwebbed out at the touch of Jim’s foot—thunderously loud, a bolt of lightning. 

Spock’s grip became painful and all of them froze. Jim held his breath as though that was going to do them any good—and waited for one crawling second, then two. The air cut at his face with its chill. 

When nothing else happened, Jim put his foot out again and put some of his weight on it. When the fissure didn’t grow any larger, he kept stepping. There was only one way to go now, and that was forward. 

They had maybe three yards to go when something moved out of the corner of his eye, and Jim glanced over, into the water. 

Nothing, at first. The rushing of the water from underneath the ice, the dark depths underneath the white froth— 

The darkness, which was  _ rising—  _

Jim didn’t even have time to shout a warning before an arm threw itself jerkily, stiffly out of the water, hooked onto the ice next to them. It hooked because emerging out of a black sleeve was a hand that had four talons. They plunged into the ice with a high-pitched hissing noise, and then it pulled the rest of its body out of the water in a sharp, horrible movement. 

He heard his own quick inhale, felt Spock recoil slightly in shock, but truthfully, the only thing stunning about it was the abruptness of its appearance, the sheets of water dripping off its frame. It was wrapped all in black, even covering its face. But nothing could conceal the jerky, wrong way it began to move toward them, like it didn’t have joints, like nothing stopped its body from flinging limbs every which way. The talons retracted suddenly, sliding into its black wrappings, and the arm moved to its side. 

It was  _ retrieving _ something. In a jarring second, Jim remembered the blasts from earlier, ripping through the snow, the blood staining the white. 

Jim found his voice.

“ _ RUN!”  _ Jim’s shout was deafening in their self-inflicted silence, and he bolted across the ice, which did not make the ice happy: cracks opened up immediately at the increased and sudden weight shift, and more mist shot up into the air, which made the skin on Jim’s face feel like it was freezing off when it came into contact with the moisture. 

It happened almost too fast for Jim to really process it. Bilquis shouted something, and Jim looked back at the black-robed figure, had time to see the tiny, spinning silver object shooting toward them, and then it hit. 

There was a colossal noise, like something large breaking, like massive bones had been crunched together. The ice folded inward all at once, and Jim had time to yell Spock’s name before Spock had vanished, swallowed by the eruption of icy-cold water that had shot out of the compromised ice—and then it was all swept away before an entire second was over. 

_ God no, God no, please God, no—  _

Jim looked up. 

The first Lorvey, behind them, had vanished into the water. When he looked to the other side of the river, there were three more, stains against the pristine white, black holes in an empty canvas, like they were not taking up space but an  _ absence  _ of space. They were simply standing there, watching them, eerie in total, complete stillness. They didn’t even stand straight. Their figures listed slightly to the side, as though they were structures the wind had bent. Simply waiting. 

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d gotten his phaser and fired at three of them. He wasn’t going to just  _ stand there. _ One went down immediately, collapsing like a stack of cards, and Jim ran right for the other two, ignoring the ice fissures, ignoring the spray on his face, because he was heading downriver—one of those uneven edges of the ice sticking out into the water was Spock’s only chance, and so Jim was going that way, and he didn’t care that he was running straight into bomb-armed pirates that had limbs that could go any direction. 

Another phaser fired, but it wasn’t his—Bilquis, behind him, covering him, and she was shouting something indecipherable—actually, Jim was sure it wasn’t indecipherable, it was just that he didn’t care, because all he could see was Spock, sliding beneath the water. 

One of the black-clad figures moved its arm suddenly, reeling it all the way back and down, something that would have broken a human shoulder. It pinwheeled, and another bomb hit to his left, sending up a deadly spray of ice shards and snow. Jim still didn’t care. His eyes were searching the water’s surface. 

And  _ there—  _

There was nothing for it, except— 

“ _ Jim!”  _ snarled Bilquis, who knew him well enough to know exactly what he was about to do.

Jim ran faster at the pirates, and when one of them jerked up an arm, unleashing those talons, he kept all of his velocity going and flung himself at the pirate. 

They went down in a scuffle of limbs—too  _ many  _ limbs—and a crunch of compressed snow. Though they looked like airless creatures, Jim realized very quickly that they were rock-solid, with no give at all in their stiff forms—as though they were made of marble. With lightning speed, the thing slammed an iron-hard knee into Jim’s side hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs—gasping, he went for wherever the throat was, but he couldn’t get any traction with it slicing at him. He felt as though all of its limbs were trying to close around him, like a spider’s. They rolled around in a vicious tangle until Jim got on top, pinning the pirate’s legs. The Lorvey, whose face was completely hidden by its head wrapping, moved something underneath the wrapping, like a jaw opening, but jaws certainly couldn’t open  _ that far _ . 

The sound it made was the sound Jim had heard in the forest—a horrible, high chittering that made every hair on Jim’s body stand on end. This close, the noise held a bizarre undertone, like a jarring, trilling music—as though someone were hitting a xylophone while a many-legged  _ something  _ skittered across the top. The sound was terribly loud, piercing at Jim’s eardrums, and Jim loosened his grip in shock as the noise crawled up his spine. 

In an instant, all of the limbs convulsed and twisted in  _ wrong directions  _ until Jim was underneath it. It didn’t go for him with the talons, or immediately try to strangle him in a logical, human manner. It simply contorted the closest limb until it pressed across Jim’s throat, like a heavy, stifling bar of steel. 

Jim choked and kneed him in the side, his fingers scrambling against the pirate’s arms. It didn’t even seem to notice, calmly pressing down, down, down...Jim realized that he was about to be strangled, that this masked head with no face was going to be the last thing he saw— 

His hand dropped into the snow, and underneath, he felt something metal under his hand.

Half-blind, gagging under the weight of that heavy limb, he aimed wildly and fired. 

Jim let out a surprised grunt when its heavy body collapsed onto his like a pile of forgotten rocks, ungainly and awkward. Gasping, Jim snarled as he shoved it off him, then scrambled back to his feet, slipping a little on the snow. He was running again before he’d thought to look around, or check on Bilquis, or whatever else could be around him. 

Not that it mattered. Nobody stopped him and he shot toward where he’d seen Spock, still trapped in the water. 

Spock’s dark head had appeared above the ice—he’d probably quite literally been thrown against one of the ice edges, a peninsula that had held firm nearly halfway across the river. His whole body was straining against the current of the water, scrabbling at the slick ice.

Jim was out onto the precarious lip before he could really decide what his plan of action was—he could see Spock’s face now, deathly white and dripping water, eyes huge and black in his face, jaw clenched, his hair slicked to his skull. Jim flung himself down onto his knees, and Spock locked eyes with him—concentration gave way to surprise for a single instant—Jim grasped Spock’s shoulders, his arms, and hauled him onto the ice with him with enough force that Spock tumbled into him. The shock of cold from Spock’s wet body made Jim gasp, but he didn’t let go. 

There was an awful, unworldly shriek from somewhere, and Jim looked up over Spock’s head in time to see the third Lorvey go into the water, Bilquis standing fiercely on the ice above him. Her cloak was ripped, one of her gloves gone, but she ran to them, her head snapping around as she looked for more potential threats. 

Spock’s entire body was shuddering. Jim gripped him tighter. 

“Hey.  _ Hey—shit.  _ Jesus  _ Christ.  _ Spock, talk to me.”

Spock was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. “This s-s-uit that Dr. McCoy gave me is attempting to rectify the sudden temperature change, but there is…” His body convulsed so hard that Jim nearly lost his hold on him. “This...I—”

He was fucking incoherent. Jim felt homicidal; not even when Spock had been halfway dead had he been unable to articulate exactly what he was feeling. 

“Breathe,” said Jim, using every ounce of his self-control to sound gently firm—calm and in control. “Just breathe for a minute, you might be going into shock. Is anything broken, are you hurt?”

Broken breaths hissed between Spock’s lips as he fought for control, still shaking violently. Jim kept his head close to Spock’s, both arms braced on his shoulders—a stabilizing force.

“Jim,” said Spock, and that was it. Jim felt like someone was sewing his lungs shut. 

“Hey,” said Jim again. “Hey. Just keep breathing, but tell me if something is broken. Did they hit you?” 

Bilquis, behind him. “Jim. Jim, we’ve got to move. We have no idea—”

“He can’t keep moving like this, he’s going to catch fucking hypothermia.” Jim’s voice was an ugly snarl, unrecognizable even to him. “How do we get—”

Spock’s shaking fingers closed around Jim’s wrist, and he yanked it close to press against his side.

It took Jim a disjointed, fragmented moment to understand, but when he did, he let out a string of expletives and pulled Spock firmer against his body, keeping his hand pressed against the wound he felt in Spock’s side. 

“He got hit. Bilquis, what do you have in the way of supplies?”

“How bad is it?” Bilquis was at his shoulder. “Commander Spock. Can you move off this ice?”

Spock shuddered and bit out, “Yes.”

Bilquis moved around Jim, her movements rapid and short. Her pack was off her back, and she was digging around in it. “Jim. We’re getting off the ice and then tucking somewhere into one of these outer caves, it should be stable enough that we can hide in there for a minute.”

Adrenaline made Jim’s blood feel hot. “Spock?”

Spock’s breathing was easier, but Jim knew that it was because Spock was using every ounce of his colossal self-control to pull himself as together as he could. “Do what you need to.”

A sharp crack rang through the air, audible even over the powerful rush of water. Frigid sprays of water kept hitting the sides of his face, and Jim had no idea what was breaking but he knew they didn’t have a lot of time— 

Bilquis reached over and warned, “You’re going to feel a prick,” and stabbed a hypo into Spock’s neck. 

Another crack. This time, a slab of ice slammed into the precarious peninsula they were on, and the tangle that was Jim and Spock lurched—Jim tightening his grip, Spock tensing his already wire-tight body. 

“Okay,” said Jim, and his voice was just on the edge of cracking, but he held it steady. Their heads were close together; Jim was speaking nearly into Spock’s ear. “Okay. Spock—I’m going to help you and we’ll get off this motherfucking ice.”

Spock didn’t say anything, but Jim felt him nod once. 

Jim wedged his shoulder underneath Spock’s arm, closed his own arm around Spock’s waist, and the two of them lurched to their feet. Spock was still shivering, still soaking wet, and they made a cold, miserable pair—but Spock was still alive, and Jim would count that as a win.

Despite the cumbersome way of walking that happens when two people are mostly tangled together, Spock and Jim managed to get off the jutting lip of ice fairly quickly, Bilquis dogging their every step. There was a sound like a concentrated explosion, and Jim didn’t look back. He knew what the ice was doing. He’d be perfectly happy if he never laid eyes on another piece of ice in his fucking life. 

Bilquis flew around them in a neat sprint. She said something about finding a cave—an “ice hole”—that would work for hiding for at least a few hours. Jim, once again, was barely paying attention. Spock’s shivers were shaking Jim’s body. 

“Can you stay standing?” Jim wanted to know. He wished he knew what the fuck he was supposed to do, other than keep Spock glued to the left side of his body and press against the hole in Spock’s coat. 

“For now,” Spock admitted between clenched teeth. 

“Is the coat helping at all? Never mind—don’t answer that. Don’t talk.”

Spock managed to give him a look through his struggling, and Jim tightened his grip. They kept walking in the direction of the hive—it was slow progress, but it would give Bilquis enough time to find somewhere for them to lay low. Bones had, fortunately, done his job well—the heating sensors he’d installed in the coat were now working overtime, and Jim could feel Spock’s coat heating next to him. 

Jim made a mental note to thank Bones later, which was a mental note he made often and hardly ever followed through on, simply because he was too busy apologizing to make Bones stop yelling. 

Bilquis was good on her word, and she ran back to them within ten minutes. It was close enough that Jim and Spock could make it without too much effort, but still far enough that Spock’s breath sounded short and fast in Jim’s ears, trying to control his pain. It was a cave hollowed into the ice, its walls thick and gleaming, distorted by the many layers of frozen water, but underneath, Jim could see solid rock: Bilquis had chosen well. The cave wouldn’t collapse on them if the ice shifted. It went down and into the hive, but they settled close to its entrance, where they could plausibly build a fire without too much of the ice dripping onto them.

Jim lowered Spock carefully onto the ground. Spock was shivering less now, but the fact that he was still sopping wet didn’t do them any favors. 

Spock followed Jim’s train of thought. “It would be illogical to remove the coat despite the water,” Spock said to him, his nose and cheeks tinged green from cold. “It is the only thing keeping me from the temperature outside of it.”

“And what if I gave you mine?” Jim said shortly, bending over to look at Spock’s side, the green stain there. 

“Similarly illogical, as you then would face the same problem.”

“Don’t care.”

“I would.” Spock’s voice was flat. 

“Move the hell over and let me see that, Kirk,” said Bilquis. 

Jim glared and, before he could think too hard about it, moved around Spock to sit half-behind him, so Spock’s back was braced against Jim’s chest, the crown of Spock’s head nearly against Jim’s shoulder. He wasn’t going to make Spock lean against an ice wall when his wet coat would definitely freeze him to it, which would be a whole other issue that he didn’t need right now. He’d had his tongue stuck to a frozen pole before, he knew what happened. 

_ Fuck _ this, thought Jim again, and said, “Bilquis, what’s our damage?”

Her hands hovering, she asked Spock gracefully, “May I?” 

Jim fought the urge to yell obscenities at her and leaned back against the cave wall. His hands kept a tight grip on Spock. 

“You good?” he mumbled, nearly into Spock’s hair. He didn’t say  _ I fucking told you so, you goddamn moron.  _ He didn’t say: what the fuck would I do if you’d died?

“As well as can be expected.” Spock’s quiet voice was almost wry, and Jim made an annoyed sound.

Bilquis had pulled out a tricorder, examining the readings. Jim said, “How bad is it?”

Spock answered, clinical and cool. “Nothing to be overly concerned about. The imminent cold of the water was more pressing.” 

“He’s right,” said Bilquis. “Probably hurts like a son of a bitch, but it was on the opposite side of his heart, and it really just gave him a nasty graze. It’s just a matter of sealing the muscle and some collagen reformation, which I’ve got the med equipment for. You better be careful with it, yes, but the thing I’m more concerned about is the repercussions of falling into that water.” She hypoed the area to numb it, then lasered a section of the coat off and peeled Spock’s shirt back to begin work on the wound. 

Jim leaned his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Spock?” he said.

There was a long pause, and Jim felt like he was going to explode. He’d never been patient and now he was like a child in his panic: give me the answer  _ now now now.  _

“A full Vulcan would be approaching systemic collapse,” Spock said finally, his words strung tight as Bilquis worked. “As I am not one, it appears my nervous system is struggling to decide how to approach this.”

Goddamn hybrid genetics. “Hypothermia,” supplied Jim flatly. “Or any number of cold complications. What I wouldn’t  _ give  _ for Bones right now.”

Spock said, “You are perfectly capable of creating any number of names to call me, should you desire it.”

It took Jim a second, but his snort of laughter was genuine. “You think you’re so funny. Bastard.” Impulsively, he leaned his nose into Spock’s damp hair for an instant. Spock’s hand tightened briefly on Jim’s knee. 

Bilquis’ golden eyes were keen, and Jim caught the tail end of her gaze when he lifted his head from Spock’s. He stared back at her for a heavy second, then flicked his gaze out to the barren landscape outside.

The sound of the Lorvey split the silence a moment later, bitingly loud, gratingly high and uncanny. It chittered on for a solid fifteen seconds, echoing and multiplying as the noise ricocheted off the walls of the Troll’s Bridge, that odd musical quality rippling underneath the sound of a chainsaw. Jim, Spock, and Bilquis sat in tense, ghastly silence, unable to do anything but wait for it to stop. The sound built until Jim was tempted to cover his ears, and then, without warning, it cut off. 

The sound should have echoed for at least a few seconds, given its volume and how much it had echoed previously. It didn’t. The immediate silence afterward rang in Jim’s ears as much as the noise. 

It was impossible to tell how close or how far away the sound was.

Bilquis glanced between the two of them, then efficiently and curtly finished her work, pulling Spock’s coat back over the exposed skin. “Be aware of that,” she said. “No pulling on that skin too much. I’m going to scout outside to make sure there’s no more pirates out there.” She yanked her phaser out, her body full of rigidly contained restlessness, and went out of the cave.

Spock took a careful breath in that Jim felt through his whole body. 

“Any better?”

“You will need to refine your question with more specific parameters.”

“What is it?” 

Spock didn’t say anything, and Jim sighed. “I’m calling this off.”

“An illogical comment that has no basis, as we cannot leave Tungsted at this time, nor can we contact our ship. We are within a mile of the generator.”

Jim made an irritated noise. “Spock, can we talk about your well-being?  _ Just  _ for a second, perhaps? You fell into a river full of ice.” 

“I am well aware of this fact,” said Spock, and Jim flicked his knee in retaliation. Unperturbed, Spock continued, “There is… perhaps an alternative.” 

Jim sifted through several options before realizing what Spock was suggesting. “A healing trance.”

Jim felt Spock hesitate. “Yes,” he said at last, reluctantly. “But I do not wish to—” 

“Whatever objections you’re about to raise, can them and that’s an order,” said Jim. “We’re both armed and this location isn’t about to bring a lot of those goddamn pirates around, anyway. I mean it,” he added, because he knew Spock and that meant he knew all of Spock’s reservations about taking time to heal himself. “I  _ mean  _ it.”

He felt Spock’s hesitation again, but this time he waited. “Very well,” said Spock at last. “You will need to pull me out of the trance—an hour should suffice.”

“And you’re good here?” Jim checked, his voice softer. He tried to convey how much he knew that Spock hated going into any sort of trance while other people were present, how much Spock would despise this, the violation of privacy. He winced. “I’m sorry. Spock, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t—” 

“Do not be. It is logical,” said Spock, and said again, his voice almost imperceptibly softer, “This will suffice. If you need to move at any time—”

“I won’t.” 

Jim could have imagined it, but he swore he felt Spock’s body relax into his side, even before he started his healing trance. 

Bilquis returned after a time, shrugging and saying that she couldn’t see any of “those screechy bastards.” She busied herself immediately with setting up a small temporary camp, checking their supplies, and Jim refused to apologize for being unable to help her. He should have cared more, but the long and short of it was that he didn’t. Spock scared him to  _ fucking  _ death and having him physically close eased the terrible tightness in his chest that had coalesced the instant Spock had vanished underneath the water. It kept replaying in his head—a broken record, barbed and monstrous. 

Bilquis finally said, perhaps half an hour later, “You ever think about telling him?”

The fire was warming Jim’s face, the light from the flames flickering eerily on the ice-slick walls. Spock’s body was slack, leaning against him. There wasn’t even any use in beating around the bush now, not when Bilquis had just seen what had happened, could still see the way Jim curled his body protectively around Spock’s. It was plain as day, and Jim wondered when he’d let go.

Jim said, “Once.”

He didn’t elaborate.

_ “I want you to know why I couldn’t let you die. Why I went  _ back _ for you.”  _

Desperate and sluggish and dying. He’d wanted to tell Spock, wanted him to  _ know,  _ wanted someone to know before he was snuffed out like a candle— 

_ “Because you are my friend.”  _ A tear, silver and quick, dropping onto the floor. That had shattered Jim almost more than the radiation. 

Jim had let it go, then. He’d realized how selfish it would have been to whisper  _ Because I love you because I love you because I love you because  _ I love you against the glass—how terrible a burden it would have been to give to Spock. It would have been no comfort to anyone, and a torment to Spock. So he’d simply held his hand up to the glass, wanting more than anything to just  _ hold  _ Spock’s hand, and conveyed his deepest wish in the form of a traditional sign amongst Vulcans. He’d hoped to God it was enough, and the last thing he’d seen before his whole world went dark was Spock’s hand against his, could almost feel Spock’s skin on his. 

It was fitting, he’d thought. Fitting that he’d take this to the grave. Dust to dust, dirt to dirt. 

In the end it hadn’t mattered, anyway—he’d woken up to Bones rolling his eyes and Spock waiting patiently, the way he always was, the way that Jim could imagine him doing for the rest of Jim’s life. He’d scrawled  _ never mind, never mind, never mind  _ across his mind until he could hold the words close to his chest, but sometimes they hovered under his tongue, so close and so far. Such a true feeling, but greedy in its longing. 

Bilquis said candidly, “You aren’t doing anybody any favors, being this selfless, you know.”

Jim smiled humorlessly. “It’s the opposite of selfless, Q. It’s selfish. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

He didn’t say: I miss him all the time. He didn’t say: I weighed my two options and found out that it’s worse when he’s really not there. 

“Is he why you left, or why you came back?” Bilquis tilted her head curiously. 

“Neither, though he was a contributing factor to both,” said Jim bluntly. What a relief, to be able to speak about it aloud. He knew Bones probably saw it, knew it in the way he knew everything, and Jim had never been good at loving quiet. “At the end of the day, I couldn’t leave space. I couldn’t face the thought of never flying again, never being out there,  _ seeing  _ what’s out there.” The thought of the nebula alone had reignited his fire for space, for  _ being out there—boldly going,  _ he thought wryly. He wasn’t done, boldly going. Or even just  _ going.  _ It was something Jim Kirk had done his whole life, and now he had his lady, and his family, and a Vulcan called Spock. 

Even when he’d been sure he was about to lose Spock. Which was stupid, because New Vulcan shouldn’t have been a concern to him: he’d already lost, in a first and final way. The first way he’d lost was to Nyota Uhura. 

The stupidest thing he’d ever done was fall in love with somebody who already loved Nyota Uhura. A firecracker—so, so beautiful, intelligent, unexpected. And what a pair they made—fiercely intellectual, both so meticulous. 

When he’d seen the necklace, he’d thought for sure he’d known. This was it, this was  _ it:  _ she was wearing his mother’s jewelry, and Jim shouldn’t be feeling any way about it, but mother _ fuck _ —who do you blame when you’ve broken your own goddamn heart? 

It was the final straw—he’d applied for the vice-admiral position the very next day. He’d been feeling so adrift lately, so purposeless, every day blending into the other. What were they really out there for, anyway? 

Then came Altamid. The destruction of his ship, something that he still viewed with the devastation of a lost family member. And he’d realized, when it was all over—even if Spock left, even if Spock married Uhura, it didn’t matter. He’d never love again, true. But the stars would still be there to welcome him home. Acceptance was a barbed kind of release, but it was freeing: he’d take what Spock gave him, first, last, and always—accepted the miracle of Spock at his right shoulder for as long as Spock would give it to him. 

And in the meantime, he’d let the universe pour its pitcher of sky down his throat and go on his way. Because, as he’d been reminded so many times—the stars would take you no matter what. It could just be you and your loneliness and they’d take you. 

What he said to Bilquis was: “I decided it didn’t matter, one way or the other. I won’t give up my ship.”

Bilquis looked at him for a long second, then at Spock. “God, Kirk,” she said finally. “Hell of a way to do it, but you sure love taking the harder path.”

He smirked at her mirthlessly. “It’s where all the fun is, Q.”

_______

Jim let Spock heal for nearly two hours. In that time, Bilquis went out and commed headquarters, telling them they needed a team to come get them off a cliff in a few hours’ time, returned, then continued scouting the immediate area for pirates. The area over the fire began to melt, but Jim had pulled Spock far enough away that the dripping ceiling stayed away from them. The fire spat and sizzled, but didn’t go out, and Spock’s coat dried, for the most part. 

Before she could come back again, Jim hit Spock hard enough to pull him out, and Spock jolted slightly before sitting up and taking stock of his physical state. 

Jim maneuvered himself out from behind Spock immediately, trying to play it off like they hadn’t essentially been pressed together in a very unprofessional way for a long period of time and winced internally at his numb legs. Stretching and standing carefully, he let Spock have a few minutes to regroup, turning away and busying himself with other things. Spock’s coloring was much better, and his eyes no longer looked too large for his face.

After a few moments, Spock looked up at him with unfathomable dark eyes, and Jim met his gaze and checked, “You good?”

“I believe I am in a satisfactory physical state. Thank you, captain,” he added, after a brief pause.

Jim shrugged and offered him a gloved hand, hauling Spock to his feet when he took it. “Q doesn’t see any more of those goddamn  _ things _ , at least she didn’t the last time she dropped by.” Jim kicked residue snow over the fire until it went out. A drop of icy water landed in his hair, and he scowled and pawed at his head, then pulled out the PADD GPS Chekov had tossed him before he left. On it was the geographical tangent Chekov had followed to the generator—a tentative map to the generator, a line right along the heat signature. “We’re less than a mile, like you said, but I don’t think that mile is gonna be easy.”

“The distance will most likely be longer due to the terrain we will be forced to navigate,” agreed Spock. “A straight path will not be possible in this natural formation.”

“You ready to go rock-climbing?”

“Most of the rock will be covered in ice, so it is not quite ‘rock-climbing.’”

Jim rolled his eyes and grabbed his pack. Spock had lost his in the river, so Spock made to follow him, but paused. Jim glanced back at him, questioning. 

Spock reached out a hand to Jim’s face, and Jim froze, startled, before Spock’s gentle, cool fingers touched his throat. 

Jim stared at him, Spock’s fingertips barely on his skin, before Spock said consideringly, “Do they not possess hands at all? Is it merely their talons?” 

Jim’s brain took a second to put together the gesture and the question—he realized his throat must be bruised from when the Lorvey had pressed one spindly arm down on his neck, trying to suffocate him. 

Spock had only begun doing this in the last year or so—instead of inquiring directly about injuries, he had started pressing his fingers against them before saying anything. That way, when Jim hissed or winced in pain, Spock could ask pointedly about Jim’s reaction instead of the injuries themselves. Jim strongly suspected it was keep him from hiding any pain from Spock, or, more importantly, Bones. 

“Hopefully they don’t need to use keypads,” was all Jim said. “It’s fine.” 

Spock stared at him for a moment longer, then removed his fingers. Jim thought  _ oh no oh no god why.  _ Spock said, “They would be a fascinating species to study.”

“Watch out for the pointy ends.”

_______

Spock inhaled uncomfortably, then focused on accepting and compartmentalizing that discomfort as he exhaled. His lungs had suffered from the sharp cold, and he would need some medical attention once back aboard the Enterprise, but he was functioning at an acceptable 76%. The healing trance had taken care of much of the unbearably heavy cold that had settled on his skin and into his organs as soon as he had fallen into the water, but in such a short timespan it was impossible to rectify every part of his system that had been damaged. 

He wasn’t often grateful for the human side he had inherited, but he knew that the genes his mother had given him were responsible for the fact that he could stand up and walk away from such an encounter. 

He followed Jim and Bilquis along the side of the formation, Bilquis and Jim both checking their positions on their handheld devices every so often. Bilquis’ told her a way into Tungsted, and Jim had Chekov’s intel to go off from there. 

“Here,” said Bilquis suddenly. “A little steep, but if we go any further, we risk getting too far away from the generator, and then we’ll never find a way back to it.”

Jim and Spock both looked at the narrow incline, then at each other.

“We’ll fit,” said Jim.

“I am not sure your confidence in this matter is warranted,” Spock replied.

It was a slender crevice fit between two walls of ice-covered rock that steadily mounted until it opened up. Because of the size, they didn’t have the visual of what it opened up into. 

“After you,” said Jim sarcastically to Bilquis, who adjusted her pack and climbed in.

Spock followed Jim in. He kept getting distracted by the memory of Jim pulling him against his chest, then waking up in the same position—Jim had been true to his word and not moved from underneath him for the full duration of the trance, something that must have been physically uncomfortable for him, not to mention made him vulnerable to sudden attacks. 

Interesting. 

Spock compartmentalized the memory for later examining—he needed his full concentration now, because the footing was precarious due to the rocky incline, made all the more difficult by the slickness of the ice overlayed on top.

They climbed their way in a jagged line, all of them bracing arms on the sides to keep themselves moving forward efficiently, until Bilquis stopped ahead of them, where the crevice appeared to open up.

“Well, boys,” she said, her voice tight, “I hope you aren’t afraid of heights.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m about to be?” wondered Jim aloud. “Why are you asking?” 

Bilquis said, “Follow me, but be very, very careful. You slip…you’ll die, and that’s a very icy grave down there.”

She stepped out into the light, stepped cautiously to her left, and vanished. 

Jim muttered, “Goddamnit,” sounding uncannily like Dr. McCoy, and hiked his way carefully forward. 

When he could see whatever was outside of their narrow crevice, his whole body stiffened and he grabbed both sides of the canyon. Spock heard him mutter, “Holy  _ shit.”  _

“Captain?” Spock said, immediately wary.

“I second what she said. For the love of fuck, be  _ careful.” _

He took a deep breath, braced himself, and slid out to the left, leaving a brilliant ray of sunshine hitting Spock’s face. Spock held on to the rough rock wall with both hands and stepped forward. 

The next step wasn’t there. 

It was a sheer drop, a slick wall of ice glimmering in the sunlight. Spock noted the distance down and calculated the chances of survival. He came to Bilquis’ conclusion: it would be a very icy grave. 

Taking in his surroundings, Spock observed that they were now inside of Tungsted: mountains and ice hills rose around them, with dangerous drops almost on every side. There were narrow paths lining the cliff edges made of rock that hadn’t quite been frozen over, creating the illusion of something almost man-made. Across the canyon, there were holes dotting the ice and the rock: some were mere feet across, some as tall as he was, some a good ten yards across. The ice overlapped and coalesced everywhere, forming walls, holes, and cliff edges. There were barely any footpaths to traverse, and making any sort of journey into it would be dogged with deadly drops, impassable canyons, and the constant danger of slipping off—and overlaying the deep crevices, sudden plunges, and jutting rocks, there were bridges. 

Some of the bridges Spock could definitively say were stable: they had rock bases, and they were flat and wide enough to be passable. For the great majority of the bridges, however, Spock knew that he would need much of his scientific equipment from his lab to be able to determine what they were made of, and how much weight they could support. And a very few were no more than threads: slender ropes of ice stretched across chasms, not unlike spiderwebs. Sunlight danced across the whole formation, and it glared in the light. 

Dangerous, indeed. Spock remembered Bilquis and Yara’s argument and resolved to be constantly watchful. 

He looked to his left, where Bilquis and Jim had gone. They had stepped onto a narrow path, both of them hugging the cliffside. Jim was watching him, his eyes a shock of blue against the sparse, cold surroundings.

Gauging his steps calmly, Spock stepped onto the path. “Lead the way, Ambassador.”

Jim looked back at Bilquis, who nodded and began carefully stepping along the path. 

It was slow, grueling work, making one’s way around the Troll’s Bridge. Spock’s nerves stretched tight, preoccupied with every piece of information his senses were hammering him with: where he could step, where he couldn’t, where he could put his hands, whether or not any debris had a chance of falling on them—and there was a great deal of falling objects. The ice was constantly cracking and breaking, sometimes falling in small shards, sometimes in large, lethal icicles. Easy extrapolation revealed that the heat generator was most likely the cause for the constantly shifting environment. Either way—it made for a long, strenuous journey. 

“See those caves?” Bilquis offered at one point. “Those lead into the tunnels into the mountains and ice. Many of them were made by our ancestors—our people used to live here before it became too unstable about two hundred years ago, when it was abandoned. I’m not incredibly surprised the generator is here, come to think of it—there are caverns big enough to put it in.” 

They skirted their way cautiously around the edge of the formation as the sun moved overhead. Sometimes they could only edge with their backs against the rock, sometimes there was a path wide enough for two. Bilquis and Jim exchanged information constantly, but it was a fairly straightforward path—moving the generator probably would have required the easiest way forward. Several times, they had to move around ledges and climb down a level, but the ice stayed solid under their hands and feet. 

Statistically, Jim was the most likely to have some sort of accident, because statistically, Jim  _ always  _ had more accidents than everyone else. Spock fleetingly wished that compiled data of Jim falling into mortal peril had less...regularity.

This was why Spock’s hand darted closer to Jim’s every time there was an irregular sound, every time the crunch of moving ice reached his ears. He would retract his hand before contact every time, but he realized he wasn’t the only one when a shard of ice the width of his torso fell dangerously close to him—and Jim turned around and seized his wrist. 

Both of them watched as the ice plummeted down and shattered against the rock face. When the echo of the sound faded, Spock glanced over at Jim.

“Sorry,” said Jim, and let go. Spock was left examining the peculiar thought that he hadn’t wanted Jim to release him. Jim’s eyes flickered over him, narrowed in concern; he was most likely searching for any signs that Spock was suffering from any pain or discomfort. “You good?”

Spock stared at him for a moment, then inclined his head. “Satisfactory.”

As they continued, Spock noticed that the level of the formation they were on had begun to widen: the levels solidified, there were less canyons, less caverns. The path they were on widened out, covered in snow instead of ice. In fact, Spock’s calculations of their situation improved very slightly—only by a tenth of a decimal, but still. 

That is, until— 

Bilquis said, “We’ve got a problem.”

Spock looked over Jim’s shoulder to see Bilquis standing with her PADD out and an elegant frown on her face.

“And that is…?” hedged Jim when information wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

She looked up. “See that?”

Spock had already inferred what their problem was based on their current location and the fact that Bilquis was no longer moving forward. “It appears,” said Spock, “it is time for us to cross a bridge, Captain.”

“Oh, no,” said Jim immediately, looking at the bridge in front of Bilquis. It was perhaps half a yard wide, and seven yards long. It looked sturdy enough, but with no visible foundation, Spock had no certain way of telling. The chasm underneath was deep, full of layers of slick black rock and ice, the bottom a seething mass of snow and debris. “No. I’m not doing that.”

“See that sort of flat place, there on the other side?” said Bilquis, and there was, indeed, a snow-covered plain on the other side, the first plateau that Spock had seen in the varied, uneven terrain of the Troll’s Bridge. “That’s...where we’ve got to go, essentially. Why, you scared?”

“Tcha. You wish.”

“Perhaps you would like me to go first?” said Spock delicately, interrupting. 

Jim glared at him. “Fine,” he said.

“I was legitimate in my offer,” protested Spock, who found that he was suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of Jim marching out onto a bridge of unknown stability.

“Mm, too late,” said Jim, already gingerly stepping out onto the bridge.

Spock glanced over at Bilquis to find that she was already looking at him, and he had the peculiar sensation that they were thinking the same thing: it was about Jim, and it was laced with irritation. 

The bridge was less tentative than the river, but it was still slow going. Jim didn’t test every step the way he had on the ice on the water, something that Spock frankly found unfortunate and more than a little reckless, but he still went slow enough that his abruptly added weight did not disturb the structural integrity of the bridge. 

Spock and Bilquis followed gingerly, and Spock examined the terrain of the canyon below as they went. The Troll’s Bridge was actually a remarkable natural formation—Spock reasoned that it had started off as a group of small mountains, but over the years of continual ice age, the ground had split and jutted upward simultaneously. He would not have been surprised to learn they were on some sort of shifting tectonic plate. 

The looming snow-covered peaks around them, filled with caverns and holes and fissures, would have been a fascinating endeavour to explore. It was only due to the extreme cold and unpredictability of the ice that Spock didn’t immediately begin an exploration plan to further analyze it—whether or not any life forms existed at all, whether or not it was possible for them to. 

While Spock was categorizing the similarities between the Troll’s Bridge and other natural formations he had seen or studied, they managed to make it to the other side. The bridge had not cracked or swayed at all, something that Spock considered an unequivocal success, considering the unsteady nature of the Troll’s Bridge. 

“See?” Jim’s smile was pleased, if not easy. He glanced over his shoulder at Bilquis and Spock. “That wasn’t so bad, we even made it all the way—”

A soft crunching sound was the only indication that something was amiss, but Spock lunged forward all the same, his senses still strained under the pressure of the constant danger. Even with his Vulcan speed, however, the ground still crumpled, and Jim still vanished with a shout that echoed back at Spock from all directions.

______

“Ow. God.” 

Jim groaned and rolled over, taking stock of what was wrong with his body. He was pretty sure nothing was broken, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he was black and blue all over. 

Levering himself up on his elbows, he looked up at where he’d fallen through the surface.

Except he couldn’t see it anymore, because the way down hadn’t exactly been a straight shot. He was pretty sure he’d hit at least two left turns as he fell, and some of them hadn’t been snow, resulting in his already-bruised shoulder throbbing painfully and some ribs that had taken a real beating. The summary of the whole shitfest was that he’d been thrown down a twisty tunnel and shot out of a shaft into a hollow space that was frozen solid. He’d made it into the catacombs. 

He grunted as he leveraged himself to his feet, looking around warily. His breath frosted in front of him, and odd pieces of his reflection were distorted and thrown back at him by the convoluted ice—it made the ice appear as though it were alive, as though there was something inside of it. 

Jim wasn’t claustrophobic, but he suddenly felt as though he could be, given enough time down here. Shivering, he turned. 

Tunnels of glossy ice stretched away from him, until he couldn’t see the turns anymore, until he wondered in the back of his mind if he was going to be trapped here forever. 

He touched one of the walls with a gloved hand and immediately abandoned the fleeting thought of trying to break it. One, it was far too thick, and two—Spock and Bilquis were somewhere above him. 

Shit.

Going for his communicator in his belt, he said, “Kirk to Spock, are you there?”

Nothing but static. 

He tried again, to no avail. It was no use; the ice walls were too thick, or he was too far below them. They hadn’t tested their communicators before they’d left, and Jim suddenly wondered if the thing that was interfering with their ability to communicate with the Enterprise also jammed their portable communicators as well. 

“Shit,” said Jim aloud. His voice didn’t  _ echo,  _ precisely—it was more like it had edges. Like words hung in the air for a moment before being swallowed up whole. 

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like how it felt like the ice was pressing in on him. 

“All right,” he muttered, pulling out his GPS PADD. If he could program it to sense the heat signature on a closer proximity, he could still potentially navigate the ice caverns and get to the generator—which was hopefully the conclusion Spock and Bilquis would come to, and they would rendezvous there and shut it down.

“Simple,” he muttered, delving into the PADD’s networking system. “Easy.”

Hopefully. The ice caverns looked like a maze from where he was standing—and he’d never been fond of places designed to get you lost. 

______

“Commander Spock, it would be  _ illogical  _ to try and go after Jim that way. We don’t even know how far down he went.” 

Spock’s entire body was a bowstring, pulled sharp and taut. Anger was seething dangerously close to the surface of his self-control, and underneath, fear moved, splintering and white-hot. 

Spock looked down where Jim had fallen in. A hole in the snow, but four yards down, it curved so his visibility was cut off. Even with his Vulcan hearing, he heard nothing. 

“Commander,” said Bilquis again. “Our best bet is to continue to the generator and hope Jim meets us there, he has his own way of finding it.”

Spock turned on her. “And if he is injured?” His calm voice had a razor-sharp edge he rarely allowed. “If he is unable to join us?”

Ambassador Bilquis set her jaw. He was reminded forcibly of Nyota: willful, stubborn. He already knew which course they would take; his logic and calculations had already worked out the best course of action. 

Once again, however, his human side was somehow uncomfortably loud.

“Then we’ll go find him,” she said, her voice rigid. “We’ll find him once we find our way down there. Obviously the generator is in the ice catacombs. We’ll never get to him from the surface. Let’s at least get on his level before we start looking.”

Spock turned away from her, his movements fluid and short, examining his surroundings. “You are assuming there is another way down,” he said. “Do you have sufficient evidence to support this assumption?” 

“The catacombs are everywhere, especially on this side,” said Bilquis, her eyes flicking over the PADD. “There has to be an actual entrance somewhere.” 

Spock inclined his head curtly, and they began to move again, closer to the mountainside.

_____

It  _ was  _ a fucking maze, and Jim wasn’t exactly  _ worried,  _ but that ugly little voice in the back of his mind was telling him that he was _definitely _going to be stuck down here forever. 

For one thing, without the sun, it was even colder. He’d yanked his hood up and zipped his parka up as high as it would go, but  _ shit,  _ it was cold. For another thing, he had to constantly retrace his steps because the signature, once he’d rewired it, was so strong it could barely figure out where the source was. 

“Huh,” Jim muttered at one point, glaring at his PADD. “With this jumbled up heat signature you’d think it’d at least be fucking warmer.”

Because of the maze-like caverns, he’d go down one path only to hit a dead end, or have to go four lefts before he’d go slightly right, or have to backtrack to find the signature again—all in all, he was beginning to suspect he was very nearly going in circles. Not enough to stop his current path, but enough to drive him crazy.

He was so focused on his PADD he almost didn’t hear the voices. 

He was close enough that their reflections were thrown on the ice, and he scrambled backwards to press himself up against a wall, out of their sight. Thank God the snow down here was too packed down to leave tracks on. 

Holding his breath, he listened as they came closer. 

Any tiny, grim hope that it wouldn’t be the Lorvey fled as soon as the sound came, echoing: the sound of a thousand legs skittering over a wall, invasive and close. Jim pressed himself against the wall. He wondered how much they could hear. 

There was another, higher sound, shorter. A pause. The sound again. 

They were talking. 

Jim waited, his lungs tight, for them to pass him. 

When they did, when he was sure the awful noise was on the other side of him, he carefully peered out, his skin prickling. 

Two of them were Lorvey. They made their way up the corridor in their rolling, unnatural gait, and Jim felt a chill run up his spine at the sight of them inside a building—inside, they looked even more stilted than they had outside.

The third, leading the other two, was also wrapped all in black, but that figure’s walk was unmistakably human, or at least humanoid; next to its spindly, ghastly companions, the figure looked bizarrely solid, like there were spectres moving on either side and not solid creatures. The only distinguishing feature the leader had was the hand that was out and ungloved, a phaser held lazily in it—and there, as the figure raised its hand to gesture, was a ring with a blue sapphire the size of a Starfleet insignia, lashed in silver filigree work. They rounded another corner, their voices fading slightly. 

When he was sure they were far enough ahead that he wouldn’t risk exposure, he darted after them. 

So much for no guards at the generator, but if they lead him to where he needed to go, hey—he wouldn’t complain about it. 

________

“Given our encounter at the river with several Lorveians, it is unlikely that this generator has been abandoned,” Spock pointed out once they found the opening, a cave set into the mountainside. There was a neat opening in the floor with an ice slide going down, which, as Bilquis explained, was how one entered the caverns: stairs would be far too dangerous, being made of ice, so the quickest descent was on the ice itself. 

“Agreed,” said Bilquis, flicking off the safety on her phaser. “Ready?”

Spock went first, fluidly sliding into the tunnel and letting gravity pull his body to the bottom. It did not take long, but it was longer than he had expected. Coolly righting himself, he took in the catacombs: he could barely see in front of him because the hallway immediately branched off to both the left and the right.

As Bilquis slid in behind him, he said without turning, “Am I correct in extrapolating that these caverns are in the formation of a maze?”

“Not on purpose, but it did become a defense later,” said Bilquis. “I think it just happened that they built them, but only they knew their way around. It was a way of throwing off intruders.”

“An ingenious design, unfortunate for us,” said Spock, whose lungs were tight with discomfort: the air was cold and closed in down here, and the light was dim and blue. “Locating the generator will be difficult.”  _ And locating Jim,  _ he thought, but didn’t say it. It made it all the more complicated that he did not know how far down Jim had fallen. If Jim had broken one of his legs, or worse, was unconscious somewhere in the maze— 

Ever coldly logical, his mind marched out the probability of Jim’s survival if he were unconscious or otherwise injured. To the eighteenth digit. 

Bilquis adjusted her wrap and strode forward, Spock close behind her.

____________

“Generator” may have been the right word  _ technically _ , but the word “generator” brought to mind something smaller than what  _ this _ was. Jim didn’t even realize he was in it until the walls turned from ice to metal, and he had to double back slightly to see where exactly he’d missed that transition. 

He was beginning to realize it was embedded in the ice so far that it had basically become part of it. Some sections of the ceiling were even ice, and some hallways had half metal walls, half ice walls.

It took him about fifteen minutes to realize a few things: one, it was warmer, but not as warm as it  _ should  _ have been (it was interfering with a planet’s weather, for God’s sake—it should have been fucking  _ hot,  _ and it was barely a few degrees warmer) and two—he was beginning to question the validity of the assumption that the generator had been dragged or transported into the formation. In fact, due to the bizarre construction and the odd placement of the ice within it, Jim was beginning to have a niggling suspicion that the generator had been built  _ inside  _ the Troll’s Bridge. 

So what was the  _ purpose  _ of this thing, then? What was it  _ really  _ doing? 

Another thought occurred to him, and he wished that Spock were with him so he could bounce ideas off him. Jim was wondering if the generator’s heat signature had been its primary purpose, or if it was just a side effect. Was the heat rolling off it intentional, or was it unplanned? 

When he rounded a corner again, he had to bite his tongue, hard, to keep from cursing aloud. 

There were at least ten of them.

The Lorvey all stood in groups of two or three, standing there like they’d been forgotten, like someone had carved statues of something they thought resembled humans and left them there, listing. None of them were moving, the silence thick and oppressing. 

It took Jim a solid fifteen seconds before he realized that they were standing in some type of control room. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears, so loud that he was sure they were going to hear it, converge on him in a faceless, spectral mass. 

Wait. If there was a control room—if there  _ needed to be a control room— _

Could all of those panels be for the heat of the generator? Maybe. But he was willing to bet a lot of things that it controlled more than that. 

He crept slowly, slowly closer.  _ _

Nothing moved. Nothing turned toward him. It was all chained, inhuman stillness.

Jim dared to sneak in further, footsteps light and silent. He was trying to get a better look at the console, to see what it looked like— 

That was when he saw the human in the center of the room. Apparently untroubled, the figure calmly tapped things into the center console, and a display appeared in the ice at the front of the room. The figure coolly began to tap at it, the ring flashing on their finger, flicking through statistics, numbers,  _ maps— _

Maps?  _ _

Jim watched, hardly daring to blink, trying to keep it all straight in his head, trying to remember what Jadis would look like from above, matching the maps with the routes they’d taken in his head. He didn’t dare draw conclusions, or even try to think what it meant—right now he was just gathering information, storing it all so he could draw the bigger picture later. 

In between his fleeting glances, however, his brain started wiring together the clues anyway, scrambling a little in its speed. He was running on borrowed time. His bruised throat throbbed, reminding him how fast the Lorvey were, how crooked this fight would be if there was one. 

Jim’s hastily gathered information began to paint a picture, and it wasn’t a pretty one. 

Because the so-called “heat generator” wasn’t one. That wasn’t even close to its primary purpose.

A feeling of dread began to pool in the pit of his stomach. Creeping a breathless step backwards, his eyes darted around the room. They needed to get out, and get out  _ now.  _

But he couldn’t leave without Spock and Bilquis. Still walking backwards, he soundlessly made his exit, and the control room full of statues disappeared behind the thick walls. 

The other question, though, now that he thought about it, was if  _ this thing  _ was what he thought it was, why was the planet’s temperature heating up? It wasn’t built to radiate heat, and if he was right, its purpose shouldn’t have caused a lot of heat, either. 

So what was causing  _ that?  _

Creeping along the corridors with his phaser drawn, he peered around another corner, more cautious this time, and found a thick metal door blocking his path, embedded in the thick ice walls. 

A wide spindle wheel handle reminiscent of bank vaults kept it tightly shut, the gunmetal gray reflecting in spears of darkness across the ice. Nobody was guarding it. It simply stood, apparently at random, in the middle of the catacombs.

Tilting his head, he glanced around to make sure nothing and no one was coming, his ears straining. When nothing was forthcoming, he stepped cautiously closer to the door, still listening at every step. 

“Might as well put a “don’t touch” sign on this, but the question is…” He touched it gingerly, his hands closing on the spindle. “Is it going to open if I just…”

Grunting slightly, he shoved it to the right until it began to spin. Without any catches, it finished one turn, and the door loosened. Opened, just a crack.

Jim looked at the now-open door. A single finger of trepidation crept up his spine. He listened again for any sound, but there was none. 

Why had it been that easy? Why bother locking something if you weren’t going to guard it, or even really,  _ properly  _ lock it?

After a moment, he put both hands around the edge of the door and tugged it open. It was unbelievably heavy, and he slid it open just until he could slip through.

The room beyond was so bright that he had to shield his eyes, blinking in the brilliant light.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he blinked again, but it wasn’t because his eyes were struggling to take in light.

The room was long, extending a good twenty feet in either direction. It was bright, he realized, because the room opened up, clear up, probably to the surface above, sunlight streaming in piercing rays, wavering slightly as they hit the ice. The room was long because it needed to accommodate the jagged fissure that had opened in the ice, ripping deep into the earth. 

The heat hit him then.

It was a blast of it, an unmerciful wave, awful and all-consuming. If he’d been cold before, he was sweating now, as though he’d stepped directly into an oven.

He realized the rays of sunlight were wavering not because of the reflections of the ice, but because of the heat waves rippling up into the air, thick and slow, hot as a volcano.

_ Volcano. _

He remembered Spock’s words then, from just the day before, when they had landed: “ _ Before this ice age, there was a period of volcanic activity that created immense stores of all manner of precious jewels.” _

“Volcanoes,” he muttered, looking around. “Well,  _ that _ might be hot enough to cause some global warming...”

This, while giving him some clarity, also made him more confused than ever. Why was this fissure here? Why was it in the catacombs, and if it had opened naturally, why hadn’t the Jadis found it, and why was it in a  _ room?  _

Why was it behind a locked door?

Wincing at the blistering heat, he crept closer. Only one way to find out, really.

As he cautiously approached the fissure, he realized it was wider than he was tall. It might have stretched across eight feet in the narrower places, and where it was widest, it was probably about ten, twelve feet across. 

But for a natural phenomenon, it was remarkably well-contained.

It was in a  _ room.  _

Almost like the fissure— 

He reached the edge, peered in—

...had been created  _ on purpose.  _

Jim saw what was inside the fissure, and his limbs all locked into place. The only coherent thought in his mind was shrieking for him to run, for him to get out,  _ now…  _ but he stood still. Frozen in horror. 

Deep, deep down, at least sixty feet, a molten river of lava flowed, shining lurid red and orange in the black, torn-up rock center of the earth. It oozed steadily along, past his line of sight, marking a fixed, gruesome path down below.

By the bloody light of the lava, he could see what else was down there. 

Tens. Hundreds. A grisly sea of unnatural limbs, a mass of black limbs, all gathered around the river of lava as though it were a watering hole, like jungle beasts to a life source. The Lorvey moved amongst each other, creating a vast expanse of shuddering body parts, all too long, all too jerky. In the reflection of the lava, their dark limbs gleamed like greasy feathers. 

God. God. Jim snarled his fingers around his phaser, clutching it so tightly his knuckles turned white. He reeled backwards at last, his legs feeling like lead. 

He had to leave. He had to leave now.

The heat waves rippled behind him as he moved backwards towards the door, bumped into it.

As Jim slipped from the room, he heard a sound, more horrible than any he had heard in his life: the chittering of hundreds of Lorvey, high as violins, unnatural as their forms, building and building and building, the screams of a hundred ravens— 

He slammed the door on the sound. Turned the spindle wheel. 

When he ran, it was nearly blind with fear, his figure distorted in the ice walls. In his mind, he could still hear the call of the Lorvey. 

_______

The Lorvey were much, much faster than Spock had anticipated.

Despite the total incoordination of their limbs, they were astonishingly heavy and nimble—not to mention that their limbs appeared to be able to contort in whatever direction they chose. Spock was beginning to wonder what precisely the structure of their bodies was, because bones could not be the answer. 

He wondered, ever analytical, even as one of the Lorvey slammed him against the ice, if anybody had ever conducted a study on them. 

He could not fathom how they could see at all through the thick wraps around their heads.

Between himself and Bilquis, however, they dropped three Lorvey. Ambassador Bilquis’ reflexes were quick and sure, and Spock was beginning to see how she and Jim had become friends and then apparently lovers: both of them swift and confident, natural-born leaders. 

The last one nearly resulted in his demise. Without warning, the curved, gray talons that he had seen when it dragged itself from the water emerged, and, almost faster than he could move, it plunged its claws in his direction. 

If he had been human, the claws would have sunk deep into his chest. As it was, he barely managed to evade before the talons dug into the ice behind him, splintering the ice with a sharp crack. 

Before he could react, or the Lorvey regain its footing, Bilquis shot it with her phaser until it fell, collapsing into a dark heap, looking for all the world like a discarded article of clothing.

Bilquis strode forward. “Did it touch you?”

Spock glanced down to ascertain that the claws had not punctured any part of his coat. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

Spock felt a flicker of irritation. “Yes,” he said shortly. 

“Good,” said Bilquis darkly, her eyes flicking around the corridor. “Don’t  _ let  _ the talons touch you. They’re very, very poisonous. We have an antidote, but we’re too far away for it to help you, and your biology is also a matter of concern—we have no idea if it would even work on you.”

“Duly noted.” His breath frosted in front of him, and the ice walls glimmered even in the half-light, distorted and thick. 

In the distance, the sound of the Lorvey echoed faintly off the walls, haunting and distinct. 

“Bastards,” muttered Bilquis, and Spock followed her down the corridor. 

__________

Jim ran so fast away from the nest of Lorvey that he ran smack dab into two more. 

Which was just typical. 

Running, he’d discovered, wasn’t actually a bad option. Their bizarre cadence of movement, though still frighteningly fast, actually made it difficult for them to keep up with a human who’d had the fear of God put into him. 

“Shit, shit, shit, shit  _ shit—”  _ he fired behind him, once, twice, before dodging around a corner and promptly hurtling around another. He had seen the map, he’d seen the markings, and he’d sure hoped he guessed what they meant correctly. 

He was just beginning to think he’d lost his pursuers when he flew around a corner and one of them was standing there, motionless, as though it had been dropped there specifically to wait for him.

“Fuck,” he said to it, which seemed appropriate.

The cloth next to its jaw shifted, and it screamed back at him, stilted and hair-raising. This too seemed appropriate, but Jim liked his version better. 

The limbs moved, contorted, and it was on him all at once. 

He slammed his phaser down on his opponent’s wrist, which lowered the wrist for an instant but didn’t do much else. The rest of the limbs shoved him back against the ice, hard enough that he saw stars. 

_ Of course  _ this part of the catacombs would be guarded. They needed to cover all their bases, and  _ this,  _ unless Jim was very much mistaken, was an important base. 

Jim went for the throat. The Lorvey tried to wind itself around him, like some sort of four-limbed massive spider, which was a  _ horribly  _ claustrophobic feeling. Jim sunk backwards, trying to avoid the convulsing limbs, and kicked at its shin until it slid sideways. He lifted his phaser. 

He didn’t see the goddamn talons until it was too late. They slid out all at once, and just as he shot the thing right in the middle (where the heart should be, but one never knew on alien planets) one of the talons slid swiftly into his side, slicing through his skin like butter. 

It slid to the floor and off of him, folding like a sheet dropped on the ground, and Jim staggered slightly, confused. He knew he should be feeling some sort of pain— 

It was like touching a hot plate, like thinking  _ hey, this should hurt more  _ and then all of a sudden it does, and  _ a lot _ . It was a small scrape at first, and then built viciously until the wave of searing pain made him stumble backwards. 

“Ow,” he gasped, trying to blink the blackness away from his vision. “Fuck.”

He waited for it to subside, which it did, but only just. 

Growling in annoyance, he looked around and listened intently. When no sounds were immediately forthcoming, he stripped off his coat.

“ _ Oh,  _ shit,” he said, hopping a little. “ _ Oh,  _ shit, it’s cold. Motherf _ uck _ er.” 

Stripping off his gloves, he hissed as the air hit his skin. “God. How do people live like this. Jesus—” Hands shaking, he ripped his overshirt— “ _ No,  _ Bones, I don’t rip this thing on  _ purpose—”  _ and pulled it into a neat, tight strip. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it stung like a bitch. 

He pulled his impromptu bandage snug against his skin and clenched his teeth as he bound it up. Tying it hastily, he grabbed his coat from the ground and pulled it back on, shivering. 

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. Right. Imminent destruction.”

Hoping to God that Spock and Bilquis were at least  _ somewhat  _ close by, he ran the direction the pirate had come from, and in a similar vein, desperately hoped that he’d read that goddamn map right and he was heading in the right direction.


	5. Chapter 5

_____________________________________________________________

_ Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. _

_ No matter how fast light travels, _

_ it finds that darkness has always gotten there first, _

_ and is waiting for it.  _

- _ Terry Pratchett _

_ ______________________________________________________________ _

Spock and Bilquis had run into moderate trouble several times, but nothing they could not—or did not—overcome. Spock counted it as evidence they were getting closer to the generator, which had defied expectations and was, in fact, fairly well guarded. 

He had to debate within himself, however, if the generator had been guarded before now, or if it was because someone had sent a warning that someone was coming. If that were the case, what was so valuable about this generator? Surely something that was only sending off an unusually strong heat wave didn’t require this level of upkeep. 

This procession of questions brought on another: was the generator something more than what they had been led to believe?

He remembered Jim’s musings of the morning, and whether or not there was an insider feeding information to the Lorvey. Multiple people had been informed of their purpose on Jadis, and many more could easily extrapolate it by observing their comings and goings. 

An uneasy thread of worry proved difficult to suppress. Spock had never believed in intuition as a concept, but Jim had an uncanny ability to see situations exactly as they were—a talent that similarly extended to his crew. It was why people followed him: when he looked at you, it felt as though he knew precisely what you wanted out of life and he wanted you to have it, too.

Forcing his thoughts to focus again, he and Bilquis rounded a corner and came out into a large, double-level room. The ceiling kept opening up, letting floods of light in, which contrasted startlingly to the narrow, blue-lit tunnels they’d just come out of. The snow and ice glittered sharply, blindingly. 

In the middle of the room was a metal trapdoor in the ice, embedded in the ground with a spindle wheel handle. Surrounding it were four Lorvey. 

“Aha,” said Bilquis coolly, and shot one of them. 

Spock perhaps would not have recommended that approach, because this only served to alert the creatures to their presence, but what was done was done and Spock followed the option of firing (given that he had no other option). The swiftest of the bunch was almost upon him and he was preparing to engage when it fell, sliding to the ground in a colorless pile. 

It took him a moment to realize what had happened, and then he looked up and met Jim’s eyes, piercing and light even down here. 

Both of them performed precisely the same mental checklist: arms, legs, face. Their eyes met again after each scanned the other, and Jim stared at him for a single instant before dodging left as a Lorvey flew at him. 

Spock shot the Lorvey in question in the back and darted back into the room, Bilquis close on his heels. 

Jim said, “I need to get to that door.”

Spock had gotten close enough to the other Lorvey to engage with him in hand to hand combat, knowing that Jim needed them all demolished or engaged. Several blows landed on Spock’s arms, but he blocked the rest, going on the defense. He was wary of the talons, returning his focus again and again to where he knew they were sheathed in case they emerged. 

Bilquis had shot the other pirate, and Jim had bolted right to the trapdoor. Before Spock could observe to see what Jim had planned, the Lorvey forced him back again. 

Spock finally managed to get it on the defense himself before his opponent froze, then dropped. Bilquis stood behind him, her phaser raised and a vicious twist on her mouth. 

“Jim Kirk,” she said, whirling around, “you’d better have a good explanation—”

Jim knelt down in the snow and closed his hands around the spindle wheel. 

“This better be what I think it is,” he muttered, twisting it with some effort, “and not the other thing.”

“The hell does that mean?” Bilquis sounded exasperated. Spock was inclined to agree with that particular sentiment, but his sharp hearing had picked up on another source of grief. 

“Captain,” he said, stepping forward, “what exactly are you—”

“Hang on,” interrupted Jim, yanking open the door. 

A peculiar, acrid blue light poured out of the small metal container fixed into the ice, washing over Jim’s eyes and reflecting off the blue of his eyes until it seemed his irises glowed. When Spock’s eyes adjusted, he saw the nest of wires within. Without hesitating, Jim plunged his gloved hand into it, face twisting in concentration—a particular expression that only appeared when the stakes were high and his focus was laser-sharp. The light was abruptly extinguished as Jim’s hand covered whatever had been emitting the light. 

Spock’s eyes flicked over him, assessing the more finite damage now that he was closer: there was a bruise forming on one of his cheeks under rumpled hair, and he was definitely favoring the shoulder he’d hit before they’d begun this trek, but otherwise he appeared unharmed. 

Spock felt a peculiarly strong surge of relief go through him and neatly pushed it aside. An impulse to examine at another time. 

“Captain,” said Spock, “there are others coming.”

Bilquis held up her phaser, her eyes flicking around the room. “What is this place? And why are there so many of them?”

“Because it’s not a generator,” said Jim coolly, grimacing as he put his hand in farther. Tiny fractiles of light bounced across his face as the light source was by turns covered and uncovered.

There was an alarming sizzling noise, and Jim said, “A _ ha.” _

He wrenched his arm a little, and the sizzling noise came again, followed by a cracking sound: he’d dislodged something. 

Before Spock could offer assistance, or perhaps a warning to be more cautious of electrical equipment, Jim withdrew his arm from the console. In his gloved hand, a small stone sat, about the size of a Terran robin’s egg. It glowed an alarming shade of electric blue, and Spock only caught a glimpse before Jim closed his hand around it. 

“Got it,” said Jim, standing. Wincing suddenly, he pressed his hand into his side, as though to some unseen wound. 

Spock’s eyes focused there immediately. “Captain?” 

“It’s small,” said Jim immediately, kicking the trapdoor shut. Moving past Spock, he caught the expression on Spock’s face and rolled his eyes. “I’m not bleeding out and it didn’t hit any vital organs, so relax, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Spock narrowed his eyes, but said, “I will trust your judgment on this, but be forewarned of the consequences later, most likely administered by Dr. McCoy.”

“Oof. Don’t remind me. I’ll deal with that later.”

The noise of the Lorveians sounded, piercing and echoing, layers of multiple clicking overlapping and shifting. If they hadn’t been warned of their coming, they had certainly been alerted to their arrival. 

“Q, you have a way out?” Jim’s voice was assertive, commanding. 

“Sure do.” Bilquis took the lead, and the three of them simultaneously broke into a light run when they heard their pursuers. The energy between all of them was alert, wary, but in control. They had an escape route, and Jim obviously had some sort of explanation, which Spock asked for a few minutes later. 

“Ever dabbled in pyrotechnics, Spock?” asked Jim lightly as they veered to the left. 

“I cannot say that I have.”

“Pyrotechnics?” Bilquis asked.

“Well. This is a bit more large-scale, but essentially the same. This isn’t a generator.” 

They were nearly to the opening again, having traversed the distance much faster now that they were sure of their course. Spock had a theory of what Jim was suggesting this “generator” was due to his line of questioning, but he kept quiet. 

“Q,” said Jim suddenly, stopping abruptly. Spock stopped with him, easily in sync; he had felt the shift of Jim’s mood immediately. Jim regarded her seriously as she turned, his eyes startlingly bright even down here in the ice catacombs. 

“Q,” said Jim again, “what’s down here?”

Bilquis stared at him. Something in her metallic eyes changed—suddenly she looked wary, and catlike; a predator, faced with something that it has been hiding. 

“Nothing,” she said, and both Jim and Spock heard the half-lie for what it was.

“All right,” said Jim, his voice authoritative. He was a captain, and now he looked it. “What’s down underneath that big snowy plain that we crossed on the way here, then?”

A beat of silence. Then, “They don’t know.”

“The pirates? You mean the ones who built a massive bomb down here?” 

Spock felt a chill go down his spine that had nothing to do with the physical temperature. 

Bilquis paled. “That’s what this is?”

“That’s not all.” Jim’s voice was hard, his mouth sharp and thin. “It’s a daisy chain of bombs, Bilquis. And it goes right to the city.” 

Spock’s thoughts were racing, compiling the new evidence with the old, creating a new analysis. “The explosives are rigged across the plain to collapse the ground on top,” he said, looking at Jim for confirmation. 

“They’re embedded in the snow.” Jim was in full interrogation mode, never letting his piercing gaze stray from Bilquis. “They have a control room in there, I saw it.”

Bilquis’ gaze dropped to his hand. “So what you’ve got in your hand—”

“It’s called andaboleite,” said Jim, who, unlike Bilquis and Spock, had had an  _ interesting  _ childhood and therefore  _ had  _ dabbled in pyrotechnics and therefore  _ did  _ know precisely what he was holding. What he wouldn’t have given for this at fourteen. “Small, but this motherfucker will release an unbelievably huge amount of energy when combined with a specific reactant—and  _ this _ has already been activated, using a special chemical formula.” He tossed it a little in his palm, the radioactive blue gleaming off his hand. “Usually it’s dormant, but if it’s exposed to the right stuff, it’ll activate itself. Then all you have to do is set it with a reactant, and  _ boom,  _ half your planet’s gone and ripped itself apart.”

Bilquis’ round mouth had opened in horror. 

Jim continued relentlessly, “That’s what was in the other console room, to the left of the control room. They were going to set it all off simultaneously.”

“A series of bombs,” said Spock. “All triggered from one large explosion.”

“Obviously they know something’s down there, Bilquis,” said Jim. “They’re willing to blow up half of your population just to get to it. So what is it?”

Bilquis stared at them for a long time, her mouth pressed together, her eyes slitted and calculating. Underneath her bold exterior, though, Spock was beginning to sense something else: fear. 

“The work of our ancestors,” she said at last, after a long moment. “A series of mines, housed in tunnels not unlike these catacombs. There are riches down there the likes of which most planets could not dream.”

“And of course you’re hoarding it,” muttered Jim. 

“That isn’t the only reason,” snapped Bilquis. “There is treasure down there, yes, gold, silver, jewels. But the reason the mines have been abandoned....no one is permitted down there; they are sealed against any intrusion. Few even know there  _ is  _ anything down there.” 

“Why?” Jim tilted his head, and Spock found himself almost unconsciously mirroring the position, both of them in sync in their curiosity. 

“Because that’s not the only thing down there,” said Bilquis simply. “And if they are setting off bombs, they do not know the true nature of what they’re doing, or their purpose is far more malicious than we had previously anticipated.”

“I am inclined to think the latter,” said Spock dryly, glancing at Jim’s bruised face. “Ambassador, what else is in the mines?”

Bilquis glanced back down the tunnels where they had come. There was still no noise of pursuers, but Spock was still keen to be on their way—he was calmer now that Jim had proved to be only minorly harmed, but now that they had disrupted a virtual nest of Lorvey, he felt that it was best to regroup somewhere else. 

Her body hard and coiled, she said flatly, “Avelinite spores.”

Spock stared at her. “This is certain?” he said after a moment, clipped and overly precise.

Jim stared at Spock expectantly as Bilquis nodded. “And avelinite spores are—”

Spock glanced at him, his jaw set. “An organophosphorus ester compound that produces a potent and irreversible inhibition of cholinesterase. It is most commonly used in chemical warfare,” he added when Jim did not immediately follow the explanation. “Avelinite spores themselves are extremely rare, but part of a common genus.”

“It’s a poisonous fungus, Jim,” said Bilquis. “It’ll attach to your lungs and shred them.”

“Jesus,” said Jim.

“It can, under specific circumstances, be...harvested,” said Spock, who had begun, grimly, to suspect what the Lorvey’s—or whoever was truly behind this—true intentions were. “It is deadly in its accuracy, and fatal in its administration. While it cannot affect all species, it is widely poisonous enough to do significant damage to a large number of planets.”

“And where,” said Jim, “do these spores come from?”

“The source is unknown,” said Spock. “They seem to exist on few planets, almost always around—”

“Volcanic activity,” finished Jim. Spock glanced at him in surprise. His face was pale, and when he met Spock’s eyes, there was something very like fear in his features. 

He looked back at Bilquis. “Q,” he said. “How long have the Lorvey been around?”

Bilquis blinked at him, her golden eyes inscrutable. “Not long, we don’t think,” she said, after a moment. “The first sighting occurred about three months ago. We didn’t believe it at first—I mean, dark spider-like creatures that move like the dead, of course we didn’t—”

“ _ Then  _ what?” Jim’s voice was sharp, and this time, Spock had no difficulty placing the dread in his tone. This line of questioning had a point, just like before: Jim knew something, and he was asking for confirmation, for clarification. 

Bilquis’ mouth pressed into a thin line. “People started going missing,” she said, finally. “They’d go out into the tundra and then...they stopped coming back.”

“That is why your sister said we wouldn’t come back,” said Spock. Jim and Bilquis looked at him in surprise, but he continued, “It was because of the Lorvey. Not because of the terrain.”

Bilquis, her eyes wide, nodded. Turning to Jim, she said, “But I don’t—”

He interrupted. “Then you noticed your planet heating up. Didn’t you.” 

She said, her voice thick with unease, “Where are you going with this, Jim?”

“I saw them, Q.”

“You saw what?”

Jim looked fleetingly at Spock before saying, his voice very quiet, “There’s a room. Down here. It’s locked. Inside, there’s a massive—it’s a big crack in the earth, about forty feet long. It opens up all the way down into the volcanic river.”

“ _ That’s  _ where the heat signature is coming from,” realized Bilquis, her eyes lighting up. “That’s what’s wrong! If we close it—”

“If you’re going to try that,” said Jim, his voice flat, “you’re going to need to stay very far away from here.”

Spock stared at Jim, waiting.

“Why?” said Bilquis.

“Because that’s where the Lorvey are coming from,” he said. 

Bilquis’ mouth opened in surprise, then horror as the realization dawned. Spock felt a shudder of aversion ripple through him, his jaw tight. 

“There are,” he said, and stopped. Swallowing, he finished, “Hundreds, Bilquis. There are  _ hundreds of them.  _ It’s like a goddamn anthill.”

“Mother,” said Bilquis, “fuck.”

“This can’t be the only planet they’re on,” said Jim, glancing at Spock. “What if... _ they’re  _ the source of the spores?”

“If they are,” said Spock, “and they seem to have no apparent willpower or intelligence beyond what we have seen, it is likely that they have someone controlling them.”

“What do they want? And is this...whoever it is…working alone?” Jim wondered aloud. 

Bilquis’ jaw flexed. “I’m not sure if you noticed, Jim,” she said finally, flatly, “But we’re pretty close to the edges of Federation space way out here.”

Jim felt a stab of trepidation go down his spine. If  _ Klingons  _ ever got ahold of a way to spread  _ chemical _ warfare…

“Let’s go,” said Jim. When Spock looked at him, he appeared pale, though that may have been the lack of light, or the information he had just compiled. “We’ve got to get back to the city.”

As they began to file toward the exit, Jim said suddenly, “Wait. You said all species couldn’t be affected.”

“This is true,” said Spock. “The fungus is not naturally inclined to attach to every nervous system it encounters. Some species have properties and antibodies to repel such a fungus.”

“Such as?”

“Not us,” said Bilquis, and then sent a shrewd look at Spock. “Or him.”

Jim balked, finding Spock’s eyes. “What?”

Spock inclined his head. “Vulcans and Jadis both have genetically adapted to our environments in similar ways, albeit completely opposite climates. For reasons they have not entirely proven, this makes us more susceptible to avelinite spores.”

Jim stared at him. “So if these bombs go off—”

“Didn’t you disable it?” Bilquis interrupted.

“This is the stimulus, yes,” said Jim, who still had his eyes fixed on Spock, his expression unreadable. “And though it’s pretty hard to get ahold of, it’s not impossible. Technically this will disable the bomb, but not indefinitely, and whoever is in charge of this probably has a way to get more of this.”

“If they acquired the stimulus once, they could potentially do so again,” agreed Spock. “An impermanent solution. We should return to the city to attempt to learn more of what is truly going on here now that we have more information.”

Shaking himself visibly, Jim said, “Q, you first. Let’s go.”

The exit was different than the entrance in that it was another vertical tunnel, but it was easily scaled due to precisely placed foot and handholds carved deeply into the snow and ice. As Bilquis shifted her weight, preparing to climb, Spock said, “This does confirm a theory, however.” He tilted his head at Jim to include him.

“Which is?” Bilquis grabbed a foothold and gracefully began to pull her body up. 

“If the mines below the plain are, as you say, secret, then there is sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that you have a traitor somewhere in your midst.”

______

That scratch that the Lorvey had given Jim was really starting to bother him. He hadn’t thought it went that deep, but he couldn’t think of another reason that it was burning. 

It felt like a cold burn, too. Icy, but white-hot. It seared at him with every step he took, somehow getting worse. 

Ignoring it, he followed Spock and Bilquis out into the blinding sunlight, blinking as the glare from the snow pierced his eyes. Pushing a hand against his side, he followed them back out into the Troll’s Bridge.

The sun was closer to setting than he’d thought—their shadows were already getting longer, casting thin blue silhouettes over the snow and ice. 

He shuddered, imagining what it would be like to try and traverse the dangers of the Troll’s Bridge in the dark. No wonder people stayed away—days were short here, and you didn’t want to get caught anywhere out here. It was deadly enough even with full visibility, not to mention the goddamn Lorvey crawling all over it. 

This time, Bilquis took the lead over the bridge. Ice and flurries of snow drifted down whenever they disturbed the bridge, but they made it back over in one piece. After checking to make sure no one was following them, they began the long, exhausting trek back to their transporter. 

God, but it was cold. Shivers began to wrack Jim’s frame, which was,  _ logically _ , puzzling: he hadn’t been this cold on the way here, and his parka was still as warm and thick as it ever was. 

So  _ why  _ did he feel like every gust of wind bit deep into his skin, like the cold was creeping steadily through his body? If this was what Spock felt like in the cold, he felt like he’d go back to the desert and never come back. 

A quick glance at Spock, however, revealed nothing. Spock was as steadfast as ever, and though the tips of his ears and his cheeks were tinged green from the cold, he looked none the worse from his unfortunate dip into the river. 

Another violent shudder ripped through him, and Jim almost stopped completely. Clenching his teeth and grateful he was in the back, he forced his clenched muscles to relax, to keep going. 

Why the  _ fuck  _ was he so cold?

The journey back wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time—having already passed through the area, they knew mostly what to expect on the way back. The only trouble was that Jim felt the cold down to his bones, and he was exhausted. 

As they neared the opening where they had come through into the Troll’s Bridge the first time, Bilquis’ communicator blipped. 

“Oh, so  _ yours  _ works,” muttered Jim, taking the time to lean subtly against the rock wall as she pulled it out. 

“The universe is nicer to me,” said Bilquis coyly, smirking. “Bilquis here.”

“Sven here. We’re here and we’ve pinpointed the safest location for you to cross the canyon over the, er, river.”

“Send me coordinates. Bilquis out.”

“Captain?” Spock’s voice was low, and closer than Jim thought.

Jim’s eyes snapped open (when had he closed them?) and he met Spock’s eyes. “Hm?”

Spock tilted his head, his dark eyes almost brown in the reflection from the snow. “Are you well?”

Jim shrugged, straightening exhausted, stiff limbs and forcing his shivers down to a minimum. “Fine. Just tired.”

Spock eyed him for a second, something like doubt in his eyes, in the tilt of one eyebrow, but thankfully he let it drop and turned back to Bilquis. 

Jim shuddered. The cut in his side screamed, lancing white-hot pain down his side every time he moved. 

“We’re jumping here, kids,” said Bilquis from up ahead. “Nobody fall.”

Jim clenched his teeth at that thought and forced himself forward. His body felt like it was being weighed down with bricks. 

It was a small leap, made next to the opening where they had first entered. Bilquis made it neatly, and Spock followed. 

Jim jumped across and staggered slightly, his cold body heavy and unresponsive. Spock turned as Jim righted himself. 

Jim nodded at him and pressed an explanatory hand against his side, knowing that Spock would see that for the excuse it was. Spock’s eyes darted to his hand and back to his face, and then his eyebrows drew together slightly. His eyes turned darker, and Jim knew that expression for what it was: concern.

But they couldn’t stop now, because Jim had a reactant in his pocket that could blow everybody sky high, and there was a chain of bombs that led right to a massive city full of people—not to mention the mines full of poisonous fungus that could kill everybody in the city—and kill Spock.

That thought sent an electric shock through him. It was enough for him to give Spock a reassuring glance and wave him on, holding his body like he could carry it normally and not like he was losing control of it, not like he felt like he was freezing to death from the inside. 

The path they took kept climbing higher and higher, taking them up past all of the thick bridges. Up this far, Jim could see all of the dangerous drops, the stalagmites, the stalactites, the uneven ice creeping over everything. Gossamer bridges of ice stretched out across the top of Tungsted, some of them so fine they looked like threads of sunlight. 

Finally, when Jim was certain he couldn’t go any farther, they reached the top. Tungsted opened up to the snowy terrain of the plateau, and Jim found that he could see for miles and miles around. He looked down, and there was the river, rushing cold and unforgiving below them. 

His shudders wracked his body now, and every breath was an effort. All he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep. 

“A little further, boys, they’re waiting for us down at the end of the plateau,” said Bilquis, standing with her hand shading her eyes. 

Fortunately, she only glanced in passing over her shoulder before continuing on. 

Spock, however, stared at him. “Jim.”

Jim waved him off tiredly. “Just cold, Spock. It’s freezing on this goddamn rock.”

Spock watched him for a moment longer, his eyes searching. “We will seek medical attention when we return,” he said at length. 

Jim gave him a weary smile. “Wonder what Chekov’s gonna say when we tell him we found him a bomb instead of a generator.” 

When Spock continued to watch him, his shoulders tight, Jim said, “So the heat signature was just a side effect, I guess.” He began to walk, much too slowly, but he was moving. 

“I would hazard that a bomb of that size would generate heat,” said Spock, reluctantly letting it drop. He, too, began to move forward, and together they began to walk across the plateau.

_________

Spock was beginning to doubt Jim’s conclusion that it was simply a flesh wound.

He kept his position in front of Jim, but he glanced over his shoulder frequently. Jim’s face had taken on an alarming pallor, and his breathing was faster and shorter than it should have been. 

Spock kept up a stream of calm explanations about the trigger bomb, and how the heat from its construction had likely been what cracked the river and that the other bombs had likely been enough to heat up the atmosphere, but he couldn’t deny the concern growing rapidly inside of him. Whenever he tried to change the subject back to Jim’s health, Jim shrugged it off and insisted it was just the cold. 

Finally, they had crossed the river from far above, and Bilquis’ people were visible. 

Jim let out a soft, hissing breath. “Spock—?”

Spock turned and looked at him. Jim’s eyes were looking straight into his face, but they were out of focus, his face gray. He swayed. 

Spock moved before he was entirely conscious of what he was doing as Jim’s knees buckled, and Jim’s suddenly boneless form fell against his body, sending both of them to their knees.

“ _ Jim,”  _ said Spock again, closing one arm tight around Jim’s waist and using the other to pull Jim’s heavy head up where he could see it.

“Shit,” Jim mumbled, and Spock let out a hissing breath: he was conscious, but barely. “God, it’s so cold.” 

Spock pulled Jim tighter against his body and rearranged him so Spock could see his face. It was drained of every ounce of color, his eyes fluttering open and closed. Spock felt every one of his shudders. 

“Jim,” said Spock again, as though it would make a difference. “Jim, where were you hurt?” Jim’s pulse was frighteningly fast, nearly humming. 

“ _ Jim?”  _ Bilquis’ voice was sharp, loud, frightened. Spock heard her racing over, felt the snow against his back as she skidded to a stop over both of them. “Jim, what’s happened? Spock, what’s wrong with him?”

Jim let out a short, pained breath. “Oh, you know,” he said, and Spock wanted to shout,  _ no, I do not!  _

“Of course they have to have talons,” Jim muttered, mostly to himself. “They can’t just be creepy. They have to have talons.”

Spock’s heart stopped in his side. Bilquis made a sound, quiet and strangled and panicked. 

Then Bilquis was racing away, screaming over her shoulder, “ _ Do not  _ let him fall asleep, Spock.  _ Sven!  _ Sven, get over here, now—”

Her sudden terror had roused Jim, who blinked in confusion. His pupils were blown wide, making them look nearly black in his white face. “What?” he slurred. “What’s wrong—”

“Jim,” said Spock, whose human side was, once again, screaming, “do not fall asleep.” 

_____

It was so, so difficult to force his sluggish body to move, but he did it. 

Sven, or whatever his name was, had stuck a hypo in his neck to shock him full of something, but really, it just made him more aware of how much everything  _ hurt  _ and how much he wanted to  _ go to sleep.  _ Sure, it briefly counteracted the overpowering numb feeling that had spread through every inch of him, but God, at what cost? 

But when Jim forced his eyes to focus, he saw Spock’s face, felt how tight Spock’s hands were gripping him, and knew he’d scared him. He knew Spock, and he knew what worry looked like on Spock, and right now it was in every line of his body. 

He remembered the hollow sound his own head had made when it thunked onto Spock’s chest, unable to hold his own body up anymore.

So Jim pulled his freezing cold body up off the snow and sat through the explanation. Poisoned talons. Thanks, life. 

Sven nervously added that he was too unfamiliar with Jim’s biology to really try anything. “I could end up making it worse,” he explained. “Our immune systems are different enough that I could try and give you a vaccine and the antibodies would actually be able to replicate inside of you, and it would kill you.” 

Spock’s hands, one on Jim’s right shoulder and one on his left forearm, grew even tighter. “Thank you,” said Spock, and to anybody else, it would have sounded calm, collected—but Jim heard the hard edge, the tense sound of every syllable. “We will seek medical attention aboard our ship, where the captain’s physiology is more understood.”

Through the irritating fog that had sunk deep into his mind, Jim saw Sven and Bilquis exchange a fleeting look and understood it for what it was:  _ if he ever  _ gets  _ back to his ship.  _

“Well, first we’ve got to get off this thing,” said Jim clumsily, wincing at how much effort words took. “I assume you can help us with  _ that?”  _ He looked at Sven, whose dark head gleamed in the sun, cleanly shaven. 

Sven nodded. “That, I can do.” He stood up, looked at Spock, and immediately thought better of offering further assistance. He spun around and marched off as though Spock had given him a direct order. 

Jim sucked in a deep breath and carefully let it out. “Stop worrying, Q,” he said. It was meant for both of them, but he knew Spock would simply deny that he was worried and say something about being a Vulcan. Instead, he reached up wearily and closed a hand around Spock’s forearm, holding on even though lifting his arm felt like a herculean task. 

Bilquis crouched by his side, lithe and slim. Her face was gentle and frightened—her confident boldness was gone, and something inside of Jim squirmed uncomfortably.

“Jim,” she said, and Jim couldn’t help comparing his name in Spock’s mouth versus his name in Bilquis’. It shouldn’t have surprised him that his name merely sounded like a word in Bilquis’ mouth. “You’d better hope they’ve reached your ship. You should’ve been off this planet twenty minutes ago.”

He rolled his eyes, which, appallingly, hurt. He felt like he was dying then, because eye-rolls could usually be relied upon in any situation to be the one thing that  _ didn’t  _ hurt, no matter the physical injury. He’d even been able to successfully roll his eyes when he woke up after he’d died. 

Oh, God. He was dying again. 

He turned to look at Spock and stopped himself halfway. He remembered how Bilquis looked at her fallen companions, how she’d stopped herself. An aborted movement, cut off, unable to follow through on looking. He knew why now. He was afraid to look Spock in the eyes. He was afraid he would see the same thing he’d seen the first time. 

Instead he just turned into Spock and stared at his coat. God, he was so tired. 

He was afraid of dying because he remembered how easy it had been. One second, full of so much agony, a body destroying itself while he was still inside it...and then nothing. Like falling asleep. That fast, that simple. 

“Jim,” said Spock, and it wasn’t a word; it was his name. 

“Yep,” said Jim. 

Spock pulled Jim’s arm around his shoulders, and it seemed like an entire lifetime since Jim had done that for Spock after the river, but at the same time, it wasn’t an uncommon feeling—this had happened before. Jim with a broken ankle on Altus V, Jim with a fractured femur on Leda XII… this was familiar. Spock winding one arm around his waist, pulling him to his feet, dragging him patiently back to Bones and waiting until Jim’s body knitted back together. It would be okay, it always was. 

He kept telling himself that, because he was afraid of how hard it was to breathe, how hard it was to stay awake. Spock lifted him to his feet. 

Jim’s breath misted in front of his face. Spock pulled him closer, and it felt like the only focal point in the world just then, the warmth of Spock’s body. Everything else was gray and cold and foggy.

With Spock’s help and Bilquis’ unseen presence somewhere to the left, they got to the transporter. It was one of the Jadis transporters for mountain-climbing, which meant that it could… well, climb mountains. Ice-covered mountains. It had specialized traction wheels and gripping hooks under the thing that dug into the sides of whatever mountain it was trying to climb and propelled it either up or down. It could basically go vertical. 

Jim was pretty sure it would’ve been much cooler if he wasn’t cold and poisoned. 

Spock managed to make lifting Jim into the transporter and maneuvering him into sitting down look and feel easy, even though Jim had lost most of his fine motor control and was no help at all. Breathing carefully and deeply, Jim felt as Spock strapped him in and settled back into the seat across from him. Their knees were overlapping. 

Jim tried to make that his focus. Spock’s knees, touching his. 

The transporter lurched into movement, and Jim couldn’t figure out why that startled him so badly. It was like a discordant chord that jarred him into half-awareness, but everything was still too bright, so he was left in a bizarre state of muggy panic for a single instant before fading back into the fog.

The disorientation had to be the worst part about any injury. The transporter lurched again, and then Jim felt himself tipping backwards. 

If he combed through his tangled thoughts, he could have potentially figured out that he knew the transporter had simply gone over the cliff and was beginning its descent. As it was, he couldn’t stop the sharp breath that he took, almost a gasp. He was still shaking uncontrollably. 

Something firm and quick closed around his wrists, and he jolted a little before he focused—Spock’s gloved hands, fingers closed around Jim’s wrists. “We will be back on solid ground in approximately eight-point-seven minutes,” he said, and Jim tethered himself to that, to Spock’s fixed inexorableness. 

Jim moved his own hands until he was holding Spock’s forearms before he leaned his head back against the seat. 

Let go, he thought to himself. _Let go._

But his hands held tight. 

__________

Jim drifted in and out, and Spock could do nothing but speak to him quietly and hope they were not too late. 

Sometimes his hands on Spock’s forearms grew slack, falling limp to their joined knees before he jolted himself back awake and closed his hands again. Every time, though, it was clumsier, weaker. Sounds visibly disoriented him, and his pale face would take on an unfamiliarly frightened expression, like something had just jumped out of the shadows at him. 

It made Spock’s chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with physical discomfort. He searched Jim’s face again and again, oblivious to Ambassador Bilquis’ presence next to him, to the bomb-laced plain they were travelling across. He knew that she had given adequate warnings, had taken care of communicating the existence of the bombs themselves, but he didn’t care. For once, the part of him that constantly hummed with reminders and protocol and prime directives had been brutally silenced, snuffed into near-oblivion as soon as Jim had collapsed against him. 

His priorities always shifted cataclysmically on their axis when Jim was involved. Especially when Jim was injured, or dying, or— 

Jim’s eyes flickered open again, locking with Spock’s tiredly. Normally the clearest blue Spock had ever seen, they were foggy and out of focus, and Spock could feel his exhaustion keenly—Spock always knew what Jim’s strongest emotion was at any given time. It was his natural-born telepathy, yes, but more than that, it had a foundation of years of friendship, of compatibility. Spock knew Jim better than anyone in the universe, and now— 

They were still thirty-two-point-seven minutes from the city. Every minute was a visible struggle for Jim, a colossal, pained effort. Jim was the bravest person Spock had ever met, and to watch him battle for his own life was almost more than Spock could bear. 

“Mr. Spock,” said Bilquis’ voice, and Spock reluctantly pulled his eyes away from Jim, who had turned in Bilquis’ direction. Bilquis had climbed up into the front half of the transporter to have a word with Sven and the driver before returning, the lines of her face elegant and tired. 

Bilquis looked at Jim for a moment, her eyes tight and sad. “Bones is going to kill you,” she said.

Spock exhaled and did not inhale. 

“They got in communication for a minute there about an hour ago,” she said, shifting to a more comfortable position. “The channels opened up for a good three minutes. Good thing Bones knows you and your affinity for immediately diving into dangerous situations, because he’s waiting for you in the city.”

The relief that coursed through Spock was such that he had to close his eyes briefly, his hands tightening around Jim’s. He heard Jim’s sharp exhale, and some of the tension left his shoulders. His hands moved in Spock’s, trying in an uncoordinated and graceless way to hold them back.

“Hang in there, honey,” she murmured quietly to Jim. “You’re gonna be okay.”

______

Jim grasped both of Spock’s forearms and gingerly lowered himself from the transporter. 

His legs still gave out underneath him when he landed in the snow.

Spock was quick and firm, tucking Jim against his own body and supporting all of his weight again. 

“Sorry,” muttered Jim, unable to keep from leaning his head on Spock’s shoulder. “Being poisoned isn’t really working for me.”

“JIM KIRK, I SWEAR TO GOD—”

Bilquis said, “Nice knowing you, Kirk.”

Jim chuckled breathlessly and pressed a hand against his side again, looking up blearily to the double doors they’d left not six hours ago. “Thank God,” he mumbled.

Bones was shoving people out of his way, snarling things at them when they protested, Chekov following him closely and apologizing profusely. Both of them looked up together, seeing the transporter and Spock and Jim glued together at the same time. 

Jim was reminded exactly how dire his situation was when Bones broke into a dead run, bolting past the Jadis people—he didn’t move like that unless something was very, very wrong. For a moment, before his regular scowl returned to his expression, something like fear twisted his face.

_ Sorry, Leo.  _

“Jesus mother _ fuck,  _ Jim—” Bones skidded to a halt on Jim’s other side and grabbed Jim’s arm, pulling it over his shoulders so he was evenly supported between them. “The hell did you do now?”

Jim sighed, a weak gust of breath. “Sometimes you get sliced open by aliens, Bones. I can’t foresee every problem, you know.”

“I’m gonna slice you open myself one of these days,” muttered Bones to him, adjusting his grip on Jim’s waist. Together, in a particularly clumsy five-legged walk, they made their way back to the doors, back to Chekov, who was hovering anxiously. 

Jim looked up at the doors, at the milling people, and knew he was in trouble. The numbness the hypo had momentarily dispelled was returning, creeping in a cold frost into his skin. Nausea turned his stomach, and stars danced in front of his vision.

He opened his mouth to say something—what, he didn’t know—before his legs slid out from under him and he buckled, only kept upright by Bones and Spock. 

“ _ Godammit,  _ Spock, hold him—” Bones began shouting for something, and Jim stared at the churned, crushed snow beneath his feet, blinking dazedly. 

Bones’ shouts became unintelligible, and Jim slumped against Spock, finally letting his eyes close.


	6. Chapter 6

_ _____________________________________________________________ _

_ I look at you and think  _

_ God. _

_ what have we done with our lives  _

_ and what did it get us _

_ —L. M. M. _

_ _______________________________________________________________ _

“He’s about as stable as I can get him right now.”

Dr. McCoy and Spock were standing outside of Jim’s improvised hospital room, Bilquis next to them. Her body was rigid, unyielding, and Spock was keeping every one of his reactions on a tight leash: nothing was properly in its place inside his head, but if he didn’t tamp everything down at once, he was going to break something.

Dr. McCoy’s arms were folded across his chest, and he didn’t look angry—he looked serious, and worried. Spock knew that when McCoy lost his bluster and gruffness, it meant that the situation was negative in the extreme. 

“These people don’t have the antidote needed for him,” Dr. McCoy continued, scratching at his head. “We’ve got some people working on it, but in reality, I need to go down there and help them isolate the gene from Jim’s blood sample that’s killing him.”

He nodded at Bilquis, who said, “We have a lab set up already.” 

“We can only come up with the proper antibodies from there—they’ve already technically got a base antidote that I can modify, but I’ll need to do it since I’m apparently the only doctor around here that knows how  _ humans  _ work.” He scowled. 

McCoy looked at Spock. “Spock, if  _ anything  _ changes, call me. He’s not great now, but hopefully we can keep him in the range of  _ fine  _ before he ends up  _ dead.”  _

Spock nodded. Dr. McCoy pressed his lips together and smacked Spock’s shoulder once before going down the hallway. 

Bilquis lingered. 

“Commander Spock—” she started to say. She was beautiful, willful, and Spock could not bear the sight of her. 

“If my captain dies because of this—” Spock had not meant to say that out loud, but he cut himself off before he could say something he would regret. He pinched his mouth together and folded his hands behind his back. 

Bilquis looked up at him and pursed her lips together, her eyes hard. 

“I don’t want him to die, either,” she said at last, anger edging her words. He had, perhaps, offended her. 

He found within himself that he did not care. She couldn’t have him, and neither could death. 

She turned and left when it was evident he would say nothing else. Without bothering to watch her go, Spock went into the room and shut the door.

Jim’s face was eerily white against the blue pillows propping him up, his breathing shallow and sweat standing out against his skin. An IV was taped to his wrist, wires monitoring his heart and his blood pressure and the general state of his nervous system hooked up to various parts of his body, all hidden underneath several blankets that still couldn’t keep Jim from shivering. 

A vacant chair stood next to the bed, and Spock pulled it closer to the bed before folding himself into it.

Jim’s eyes had opened by the time Spock returned his gaze to his captain’s face. They were still glazed, tired.

“Hey,” he croaked. “‘S the verdict?”

“Dr. McCoy has left to determine the direct cause of how the poison is affecting your system,” said Spock. “He hopes to isolate the gene and modify the existing antidote from there.”

Jim sighed and closed his eyes, his face scrunching in discomfort as he took one careful breath, and then another. 

“Can I go to sleep now?” he mumbled. “‘M tired.”

Spock settled himself into his chair. “You can,” he said. “Provided you wake up again.”

Jim’s eyes opened again, and he looked at Spock for a long moment. “Okay,” he said, his voice very quiet. 

After a long pause in which Spock catalogued every difficult breath that Jim took, Jim asked, “And you’ll stay?”

“Yes.” 

____________________

Jim slipped in and out of sleep, and as Spock had promised, he was always there when Jim opened his eyes, however briefly. Sometimes Bones was there, checking him over, and once Bilquis was. 

He was still freezing all over, and breathing took a ridiculous amount of effort. 

That was probably where the nightmares came from. God. Life was so short, but forgetting took so  _ long.  _

He was fifteen, freezing to death. He could still see every one of their faces, still see the horror on all of them when Kodos made his announcement, broadcasted on every corner of the planet. His hands remembered. His stomach remembered. His bones remembered. 

He could see Finn, tiny and slender as a deer, trying to hide his tears on his frail face. He saw the peacekeepers in their uniforms with their guns, marching over the snow, leaving red trailing in the fields, mingling with the blood from the Jadis and the pirate attacks— he saw Kat, leaping to her own death, but when he ran to look for her body, it was Nyota’s, broken on the frozen cliffs far below… then on a white plain, there was Kodos, standing in the snow in a white suit, smiling beautifically, holding a peacekeeper’s gun up to fire at Spock’s chest— 

“Jim.  _ Jim.” _

Spock’s body leaked green across the snow, Jim heard himself screaming— 

Something was beeping incessantly, and Jim realized it was a nightmare, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was so, so cold. He was still fifteen and he was still standing in a snow-covered field, white as far as the eye could see, and the bodies were wearing white, too.

“He’s delirious. It’s the fever.” And that—that was Bones’ voice, growling and angry and worried.  _ It’s fine,  _ he tried to say, like he always did when he stayed at Bones’ house and woke up sweating and gasping.  _ It’s okay.  _

But he couldn’t this time, because he was back in the town, back to being so young and so—  _ forgotten.  _

He’d written his name on the fog of the transporter, he remembered suddenly. He’d written his name over and over again, like it could keep him from disappearing. 

He was distantly aware of his body, how he was thrashing against his own pain, against the cold that leaked from the wound in his side. 

“Jim. Wake up.” Spock. 

(This is what he’s afraid of, this rolling heaviness inside his chest that comes out and reminds him that one way or another—Jim Kirk is the one who always gets  _ left).  _

_ Please, I don’t want to go back—  _

He remembered this, too. Behind the glass, full of radiation. He’d been so tired in the end. 

But he’d told Spock he’d wake up— 

He felt the hands on him then. Awareness was slowly coming back to him. Blankets were tangled around him, and two of the hands were hot: one warm handprint on his chest, the other on his right upper arm. Another hand held his left arm. 

“There, Jim. Come on.” 

Consciousness came back in an overwhelming sensory wave: heavy, too bright, unsettling. He gasped once, twice, staring. It was a ceiling, and it was blue. There was no snow here. 

He looked to his right out of habit, and there was Spock, leaning over him, bracing his hands on Jim’s chest and arm. The features of his face weren’t as schooled as they usually were, and the dark of his eyes was startlingly shattered-looking. 

Bones was on the other side, a tricorder in the hand that wasn’t gripping Jim. 

“You with us?” Bones flicked his eyes to Jim’s face, then back to his readings. “Breathe, kid. Come on.”

His voice sounded absurdly soft, almost gentle. Jim didn’t like that. He tried to say as much, but breathing took up all of his energy.

Jim moved one of his hands up and clutched at Spock’s wrist. He stared at the ceiling again, because it took less effort.

Bones said something else, but it may have been to Spock, because Spock said something in return. Jim could only pay attention to the timbre of their voices: Bones’ rougher and louder and comforting, Spock’s evenly enunciated words, quiet and cool. 

He flinched lightly when a hypo was pressed against his neck, and Bones’ voice resolved into the words, “Oh, for crying out loud. You were poisoned not three hours ago, you baby.”

Jim huffed something akin to a chuckle, which was about all he had energy for. He was still shivering.

God, was that all he was, at his core, stripped down to the bare minimum? Go past all those galaxies inside him, all that talk of  _ boldly going,  _ and what was there after that? Some fifteen-year-old kid, still cold, always hungry—and above all alone, and tired, with no one to love him, afraid that perhaps no one ever really had, and no one ever would.

_ You’re just tired,  _ he reasoned within himself.  _ You’re just tired and poisoned and dying. _

He listened to the sounds of Bones and Spock talking over him for an indeterminate amount of time before he closed his eyes again. He was distantly aware of his hand falling away from Spock’s wrist. 

The last thing he felt was Spock’s hand still on his chest, over his heart. 

__________

The nightmares didn’t leave him alone. 

It was always difficult when he was ill, especially. The feeling of helplessness, coupled with the all-too-familiar heaviness of a fever, sent him right back to Tarsus, right back to the memories waiting to swallow him whole. 

He moved uneasily between sleep and half-awareness, tangled memories and fears following him both places. Finn, thin and birdlike, holding his mother’s hand as she gasped her last. Olivia, more a mother to him than his own had ever been, telling him to keep the stars in his mind’s eye, so he’d never be alone. He’d remembered that when Kodos’ peacekeepers came for her, dragged her out into the snow. Her coffee had melted some of that snow on the porch steps, splashed over her clean pots that she kept ready for spring. Scotty’s tea spilled over the control boards when the peacekeepers dragged him out, too, slamming the door—then the peacekeepers turned into Krall’s people, and Krall was holding him by his head, slamming him against the shattered hull of the Enterprise while his crew screamed around him as they were sucked into space— 

Frank had slammed doors. Frank had slammed a lot of things. The pain in his side—probably from Frank taking his body and throwing it against the porch railing, the unforgiving wood digging in too far— 

Well, that would’ve made sense except Iowa was so hot that summer, sweltering and melting under that sun, and Jim could feel himself shivering—

Frank loomed over him, reaching out with hard, sturdy fingers, and Jim braced himself for the hit, for the punch, for the new bruise that would form—

Instead, he found himself peacefully looking at the stars. He was on the Enterprise, he’d just finished a long shift, and he was calm, fed, content. He was waiting for Spock, because Spock always found him up on deck 6, watching the galaxy coolly fly past them in a star-filled blur. Something else was in his mind, but it wasn’t threatening—it was familiar, warm, a soul he’d touched before. 

Jim opened his eyes.

It was dark outside, now. He could see the inky black of night through the window, melting down into the faint blue band where the sun hadn’t quite finished touching the sky. The clouds were fat and dark, weaving unevenly over the stars. 

He could hear his own breathing, because it was loud and wheezing, shocking in its exhale and inhale, pulling at the bandage over his side. It was a sharp contrast to the lingering feeling of contentment that still drifted in wisps from his dream.

Spock’s hand was still on his chest. In the half-light from the single lamp on the wall, his eyes were liquid when Jim found them. 

“My apologies,” said Spock at last, very carefully. “It is only—”

The pieces clicked into place. “You did that.” His words were clumsy things, too long and slurred, full of effort. 

Something pulled at Spock’s mouth, and his eyes darted away from Jim’s. “I am sorry,” he said again.

“Don’t be. You’re welcome in my head, you know that.” He remembered Prime mind-melding with him on Delta Vega. It had been a shocking, terrifying experience, seeing glimpses of another life, another universe, tinged with older Spock’s pain. Later, though, he’d thought about that time and time again—what it would be like to have Spock, his own Spock, in his head at invitation, to have Spock’s thoughts mingled with his. Sometimes it felt like they could read each other’s thoughts nowadays, anyway. “No promises on the quality of content, though.” 

“You were distressed,” said Spock, after a moment. That something was still hovering in the planes of his face, moving his eyebrows just out of place, swimming uneasily in his wine-dark eyes. “I wished...to alleviate it somehow.”

“You did.” Jim shifted uncomfortably, then pulled his hand back up to Spock’s wrist, focused on closing all of his cold, stiff fingers over Spock’s hot skin, feeling the almost fragile feeling of his slender wrist bone. He moved his thumb almost unconsciously over the jut of that bone, the hollow just below Spock’s hand. He didn’t really have the energy—or the time, for that matter—to really mull over the implications that Spock had lightly walked inside his mind, through a door that had always been open to him. “What did you see?”

“Impressions, mostly. I did not wish to intrude.” Spock’s voice was hesitant. “Memories of Altamid, I believe, and then...a planet covered in snow, and individuals in white uniforms.”

Jim’s dry, cracked lips quirked into a humorless smile. “Tarsus,” he said by way of explanation.

Spock’s hand tensed underneath Jim’s fingers, then relaxed again.

Jim remembered when he’d finally told Spock about Tarsus. It had been two months after he’d (finally) been cleared for active duty again (“Jesus  _ Christ,  _ Jim. You bloody  _ died _ . Can we remember that, please?”). Kodos had been found on some remote planet, and they needed people to testify, to come forward as witnesses for the massacre so he could be put on a penal colony somewhere and never bother anybody again.

Jim had testified, of course. But not before Spock had found him on an upper deck of the Enterprise, quite clearly hiding, pale and shaking all over, dark circles standing out under his eyes from his constant nightmares. 

Spock had calmed him down and never asked for an explanation, but Jim had eventually given him one, just before Kodos’ trial. When Spock had heard of Jim’s abandonment on a strange planet and subsequent loss of an adopted family, his face had gone blank with a rage that Jim had seen only once or twice before sorrow had crept in around his eyes. 

“I grieve with thee,” he’d said, formally and quietly. 

Spock had gone with him to Kodos’ trial, and it had only been the staunch, silent support of Spock at his right shoulder that had gotten him through that horrific day at all. He’d had to look Kodos in the eyes, and the only thing that kept him from folding from grief was Spock’s hand at his back, a quick but firm touch. 

When they had retired that night, Spock had stayed to talk quietly with Jim until he fell asleep. When he woke the next morning, Spock was still there, elegantly folded in a meditation pose, clearly not having moved all night, patient and present and painted in the half-light from the dimness of the room. 

That was when Jim knew that for him, this was it. He knew he loved Spock, but that was the moment his fickle heart settled, permanently, and his battle began: how to hold it all, so none of it would seep out of the cracks inside him? 

The next day, Spock had smugly solved an astronomical equation that had baffled scientists for decades, having found the missing piece of the equation by doing a conversion halfway through it, thus creating an unforeseen shortcut and revealing the answer. 

Jim had been laughing to himself, having understood exactly what Spock had done and reveling in the self-satisfied tilt of his left eyebrow when Nyota had come up next to him and chuckled, “And that one’s mine, ladies and gentlemen.”

A joke, perhaps. A passing line. But any thought of telling Spock about any of what was going on his head had vanished immediately. 

So he’d stood by. Spock had chosen Nyota, and Spock’s happiness meant more to him than anything in the world, anything in the galaxy, and Jim would choose it over his any time. 

Jim remembered that now, his lungs shuddering in his chest. The basement in his head was a ghost story, and all the rooms upstairs were full of a Vulcan he’d once called “pointy-eared bastard” and hated with his whole heart. 

Thanks, life. 

His breathing hitched wetly, and he sucked in a trembling, hoarse breath, coughing slightly. He wanted to ask Spock to stay again. He wanted to ask Spock if he ever thought about how lonely the stars must be, all bunched up there in a sky that never ended, around so many others but never touching. 

“Jim,” said Spock, tethering him. “Dr. McCoy has nearly blocked off the virus he believes is in the poison. It should not be very much longer.”

Jim could almost hear the unspoken words:  _ don’t give up yet, you’re so close.  _

“If you should have any more nightmares…” Spock hesitated again, uncharacteristically uncertain. “I wish to help with them. It is the only way I can assist.”

He was seeking explicit permission, but all Jim whispered was: “Thank you.” He didn’t say: for everything. For the years and the trust and you. He didn’t say: I think we do get miracles. Thanks for being mine. 

He slipped into a light, pained sleep again, and the night marched wearily onward.

_______________

Spock knew that Jim was dying now, and if Dr. McCoy did not find a proper antidote in the next two-point-six hours, Jim’s chances of survival slipped down into the single digits. McCoy had been back several times, checking Jim’s vitals and administering hypos that kept the poison from stopping Jim’s heart, but now he stayed in the lab, grimly determined to find that antidote before his best friend died, and this time permanently: this bright, golden soul snuffed out forever, a candle carelessly blown out.

This time Spock didn’t have any point to focus his helpless rage on: there was no Khan, no one to hunt down in the supposed name of justice, and no excuse for the anger larger than anything he’d ever known. The anger and the pain moved back and forth in his mind, and he was no longer sure which emotion was masking the other. 

Every one of Jim’s breaths was a noise that filled the deathly silence of the room: each one an alarming rattle, a painful wheeze. Spock kept his hand over Jim’s heart, feeling it flutter underneath his palm, beating faithfully onward. 

Just like the first time, his mind observed coolly from somewhere inside him. There was that stubborn, persistent life force, willful and unyielding, clutching on to the last bit of vitality, determined to hold on as long as he could. 

_ Don’t,  _ he thought helplessly, humanly.  _ Don’t let go.  _

But he knew just as well that even the strongest will had to bend to the body’s workings. No matter how much Jim fought, he couldn’t stop the poison from taking his life from him as easily as that candle was blown out. 

It was just that life seemed so unbearable without Jim in it. 

Approximately twenty-seven-point-eight minutes after their conversation about Jim’s nightmares, Jim’s eyes opened again, a shock of too-bright blue in his white, sweat-covered face. 

“Spock,” he gasped.

Spock got up off his chair and sat on the bed, his other hand stroking back Jim’s damp hair. “I am here,” he assured Jim, feeling the desperate beating of Jim’s heart, the struggle for every breath. 

Jim’s words were strained, breathless, almost unintelligible in his pain. “Spock,” he said again, his eyes fluttering. “I just…”

Spock waited, his heart clenching painfully in his side. He felt so, so human in that moment, like his heart should have been in his chest, beating hard and red. This was what he had been trying to escape for his whole life—this humanity, bleeding out inside of him.

“Will you go back to the Enterprise?” he breathed suddenly, his eyes fixing blearily on Spock’s face. 

Spock opened his mouth and closed it. 

He knew what Jim meant. He meant after. Jim was convinced he was going to die. 

Jim’s eyes closed. “...make a good captain,” he said, somehow a thread of humor in between rattling breaths. 

Spock took one breath and then another, just listening to the beat of Jim’s heart.

“No,” he said, finally. His voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears—thick with his own pain. “Not without you.”

In his mind, conjured up by his perfect memory, he was in a sun-soaked courtyard of New Vulcan, his skin warm and his face turned to the light. Next to him was Prime, sitting in a chair and similarly positioned towards the heat. 

Spock had asked him, possessed by an idle curiosity: “Did you serve aboard the Enterprise for long?”

Prime had opened his eyes, turning to look pensively at his younger self. It was always a bizarre shift in reality to find his own eyes staring back at him from such a lined face. 

“I did, for an impressive amount of time,” said Prime. “I had many journeys and adventures aboard that ship. But I terminated my employment the moment Jim decided to retire, and never set foot aboard the ship again, although they did ask me to.” He was preoccupied with some internal memory for a time, before he added, as though in an afterthought, “The Enterprise is full of Jim Kirk. It was in my time, it will be always, even after the ship has seen many captains. I could not walk its halls with his memory existing thus there—not after he had died. Not when I felt that I should see him around every corner.”

Sometimes Prime would admit things like this. He rarely talked about anything in his previous life, determined not to sway Spock’s own decisions in any way, but occasionally, he would mention something about his universe, always laced with a heavy sadness. 

Spock, now, understood exactly what Prime had meant in a way that he hadn’t that summer day in a desert courtyard. If Jim died here, Spock would never want to board the Enterprise ever again. In fact, the idea of even being in space without Jim’s unbridled enthusiasm for it punctuating every experience was abhorrent to him. 

_ The Enterprise is full of Jim Kirk,  _ Prime had said, and Spock felt that if he tried to even look at the ship, let alone go on the bridge where Jim belonged in that center chair… well. If James T. Kirk were never to walk the ship again, then Spock would not, either. They belonged on that ship together, or not at all. 

“...sure?” said Jim now, slurred and strained. 

Spock stroked Jim’s hair back again, his thumb moving over Jim’s cheek. “I am,” he said, with grim and total conviction. “Do not trouble yourself with it.” 

“...cold,” whispered Jim, a shudder wracking his entire body.

Spock settled himself more firmly on the bed, then took Jim’s fever-ridden body into his arms, closing his arms around Jim’s shoulders with Jim’s head against Spock’s shoulder, lending Jim all of his desert body heat. 

Jim inhaled sharply, then relaxed, boneless, against Spock’s chest. He started to say something, then stopped in favor of another strained breath.

Taking care not to press against the wound in Jim’s side, Spock wrapped his arms more firmly around Jim and watched the rise and fall of Jim’s chest, counted every heartbeat, every breath.

_________________

Jim remembered when he had learned that black holes could generate sound waves. That for two billion years, a black hole had been singing. 

He almost felt that he could hear it. It was singing to him, somewhere far below middle C, somewhere on the way to wherever  _ beyond  _ was. 

_ Leave me here,  _ he thought. He could feel Spock’s arms around him, trying to keep him there.  _ I’m not ready, leave me here.  _

But if he had to go—in all the ways he could’ve died, this wasn’t a bad one. There wasn’t any glass, and he was pressed against Spock’s warmth. 

If he had to take it to his grave like this— 

There were worse ways to go.

_________________

Spock knew, in a terrible and complete way, that this was how history went, how every story in the galaxy went: someone had to leave first. There was no other version of it; it was an irrefutable truth, one of the oldest of all time.

Two-point-one hours later, Dr. McCoy slammed the door open so hard that even Jim moved uneasily, his head jerking slightly in his half-consciousness. His labored gasps had quieted, but his breaths now were a death rattle. His body was hot, damp, limp in Spock’s arms, his head lolling against Spock’s shoulder, skin leeched of every ounce of color. Spock lifted his head wearily. 

McCoy didn’t say anything about Spock and Jim’s position, or about anything at all. It was three-fifteen in the morning, the night cold and dark and pressing against the windows, heavy with the bleak and relentless passage of time. Neither of them had any energy for communication. 

McCoy walked over to the bed, and Spock silently untangled one of his arms from around Jim. Still silent, his mouth pinched and exhausted, McCoy pulled Jim’s arm out and stabbed a needle into it.

Both of them waited in silence as the antidote emptied into Jim’s bloodstream.

Spock locked eyes with Dr. McCoy when he lowered Jim’s arm again, and McCoy scrubbed a weary hand over his face. 

“We wait,” he said at last.

Spock looked at Dr. McCoy, and McCoy looked back at him with a strange expression. After a moment, he said, “Call me if you need me. If anything goes funky with his vitals, I should be notified anyway, but I trust you to notice faster than those machines. I’ll be back every hour.” 

Spock inclined his head, and McCoy departed, most likely to catch up on a few minutes of much-needed sleep. 

Spock settled down again and resumed his task of listening to Jim’s heartbeat.


	7. Chapter 7

_________________________________________________

_ “Everything I ever did was just another way to scream your name.” _

_ -Florence and the Machine _

_ ____________________________________________________ _

  
  


When Jim woke up again, it took him several moments to realize what was wrong—or rather, what was  _ not  _ wrong.

He could breathe again. Oh, God. He’d never been so grateful for the easy inhale and exhale of air in and out of his lungs in his life. He took a deep, soothing breath, reveling in the sensation of his lungs inflating without pain, without effort. He did it again, just to prove he could. 

And he was so warm— 

He was too warm.

Jim wriggled a little before his eyes flew open. 

His entire body was tangled in a bed, morning light pouring in golden squares over the blue quilts. Medical equipment was parked neatly next to the bed, wires curled, obviously having been used for him at some point, but he was (as far as he could tell) not dead, or dying anymore, actually— 

Which brought him back to the “tangled” bit. His body was tangled in blankets, and  _ Spock _ .

He was curled firmly against Spock’s side, one of his arms thrown loosely around Spock’s waist, his head tucked into Spock’s shoulder. Spock was, for once, sleeping peacefully, his face relaxed, both of his arms around Jim’s shoulders. Their legs, under the covers, were overlapping, and Jim thought briefly, foolishly, of the transporter, and their knees touching. 

Jim craned his neck back and stared at Spock’s sleeping face stupidly for a minute, his mouth slightly agape. 

_ How?  _ What?  _ When?  _

His brain short-circuited. 

Okay. He was not dead. Not in pain. Good. Check. He was also in bed with...Spock…

Well, that...wasn’t a  _ bad thing.  _

He took another deep breath, and Spock’s eyes opened. 

Jim stared at him, searching his face, and Spock stared back—he didn’t look wary, or startled in that controlled, vague sort of way that he had, or any of the other reactions Jim thought he might have had on finding Jim so physically close to him. Neither of them said anything, and Jim waited for the silence to become awkward, but it didn’t. It was just them, warm, and the squares of sunlight, the dust motes swirling like fireflies. 

Very slowly, almost unconsciously, Jim lifted his fingers and let his index finger drift over the severe line of Spock’s eyebrow. He didn’t know what it was, or why he was allowing himself to do it. He just did it. Spock let him. They stared at each other in the morning light, Jim smoothing his single finger across Spock’s eyebrow. 

Spock exhaled and moved his hand to Jim’s chest, over his heart. 

The doorknob turned, loud and startling in the filmy, blue silence of the room. Jim dropped his hand and turned over, strangely unconcerned about someone walking in on them. Spock let his hand drift away to his side. 

Bones walked in, slammed the door behind him, and said, “You’re one lucky motherfucker, Jim Kirk.”

_________

Bones was, as Jim had expected, furious with him. The lecture that followed was long enough and loud enough that Jim knew that he’d well and truly scared Bones, and that thought made Jim sit meekly through the tirade, and the four hypos that followed. 

Spock had neatly untangled himself from the blankets to make way for Bones’ examination, and he was now standing patiently next to the bed, his hands folded behind his back. Jim wanted to look at him, to try and find that loose, content look in his eyes that had been present not fifteen minutes ago, but he strongly suspected it would have vanished. He couldn’t tell if he was more troubled by that or by the fact that it had existed at all. 

Spock had held him through the night. He remembered that. He remembered thinking in a disjointed, far-off way that he was going to die. He was going to die with Spock holding him.

Jim felt that overnight, things had shifted on their axis. It was an oddly specific but complicated feeling: like someone had taken the furniture in his quarters and moved it six inches to the left; it was still all the same, but displaced. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about kissing Spock. Not by a long shot. It was just that this was the first time that he thought he might actually do it. It was just that this was the first time that his hands had taken something they wanted—they had touched—and nothing had stopped them: neither him, nor Spock.

There was a knock at the door. Bones scowled deeply and glared at Jim.

“Got it,” said Jim mildly. “No more near-death experiences.”

“I’ll kill you myself, Jim, and save us all the trouble if you pull a stunt like that again.” Bones jabbed a final, dangerous finger at Jim and, content with the amount of threats he had delivered, opened the door.

“Sorry, Q,” said Jim when Bilquis’ face broke into a huge, relieved grin at the sight of him sitting up in bed. “Not rid of me yet.”

“Did you threaten him within an inch of his life if he tries that again?” Bilquis asked Bones, her body radiating happiness. When she was this joyful, it was difficult to resist feeling precisely the same way; Q’s happiness was addicting, infused with a kind of delight that she rarely displayed over her regular coy amusement. It had made a fool of many to try and elicit this reaction more than once, Jim included. He’d loved this side of her, and it still made him smile. She beamed at him, moving to his bedside and tossing herself onto his legs.

Jim thought about tracing Spock’s face with his fingertips and actively avoided looking in Spock’s direction.

Behind her, her sister Yara watched, amused, from the doorway, giggling at her sister’s blatant familiarity. As Bilquis chattered on, her sister rolled her eyes in a fond gesture and glanced out into the hallway, clearly wondering why a starship captain had the nerve to nearly die inside their compound and then still be hanging around after it was clear he wasn’t going to die anymore.

Jim froze.

There, on Yara’s index finger, a huge blue sapphire set in slender threads of curling silver glimmered in the light. 

Oh, God. 

Bilquis, still talking, didn’t catch the look of dead-eyed horror that crept over Jim’s face, the last piece that clicked into place in his head. He stared at Yara, trying to equate her with a traitor, with someone who would destroy her own people, when her own  _ sister _ — 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spock shift closer to him, and he looked up to lock eyes with his first officer. 

He knew Spock saw the expression he still couldn’t pry off his face. Spock stared at him, his eyebrows slowly drawing together, his eyes darkening, a strangely flat look that made him look frighteningly protective. 

Jim would dissect that later. 

“Hey, Q,” he said, rearranging his features into what he hoped was a passable look, “I’m...tired, can we talk later?” 

Bones’ head shot up, and he whirled and narrowed his eyes dangerously at Jim. Bones knew Jim didn’t ever say he was tired. Bones knew Jim would have ripped his own arm off before saying he needed to be left alone. 

Q didn’t think much of it. “Yeah, sweetheart.” She rose up on her knees and dropped a sweet kiss on his cheek, her diamond earrings swinging forward and brushing his face like a second, colder kiss. “Yara’s dragging me off, anyway. We’ve got to go to the western part of the city, so I’ll be back in a few hours.”

The western part of the city, Jim remembered, was the other main exit and entrance to the city. That one led to the ports, where transporters were kept, and past that was the space dock. 

Okay. Well. At least she was planning on escaping  _ with  _ Bilquis.

Which brought another horrible question: was Bilquis  _ in on…  _

She couldn’t be. Jim remembered her face when they’d discovered that it was a bomb, that they were planning on opening up the planet like a surgical experiment. It was next to impossible to fake that kind of horrified honesty. 

His heart drummed in his chest. If Yara was leaving, then that meant that she was planning on doing something here. In the most populated part of the city. 

Bilquis ruffled his hair and danced out, perfectly calm again now that she was certain Jim was all right. 

The heat signature. 

It was too faint to affect anything but the surrounding area, probably tossing off gases when they built it that had melted the river along with the volcano, not to mention the power tools they would’ve brought in—none of which would have been eco-friendly to this ice age plane. Which meant that for it to be affecting the  _ city…  _

As soon as the door closed, both Spock and Bones began speaking. 

“All right, Jim, what the hell was—”

“Is there something that—”

“There’s another one,” said Jim, cutting them both off. “There’s another one underneath this city, it’s another reactor. They set them on both sides of the chain of bombs, probably just in case, and I’ll bet both of them were set.”

As he babbled on, only Spock’s face changed with understanding. The only thing that changed about Bones’ face was that his scowl deepened. 

“Jim,” he interrupted. “What in the goddamn hell are you on about? Did you just say  _ bomb?”  _

Frustrated, Jim pushed back his covers. “ _ Listen,  _ I know who—”

“What the  _ hell,  _ Jim!” Bones lunged forward. “What did I  _ just say?  _ You are staying  _ right  _ here—”

Spock stepped forward, interrupting. “Doctor, let him finish. Jim, please stay where you are, you have not fully recovered.”

“There!” Bones threw up his hands as Jim automatically stilled, Spock’s eyes drilling into him. “If you won’t listen to  _ me,  _ listen to the green-blooded hobgoblin!”

“It’s Yara,” said Jim, staring back at Spock. “It’s  _ Yara,  _ she was there in the generator—not generator—whatever. It doesn’t matter, she was  _ there.”  _

Spock’s eyes turned dark, almost black, like the color had suddenly been sucked out of them. Jim felt something dangerous and vicious move inside of his mind, and with another shock, he realized it was coming from  _ Spock,  _ from the same place that Spock had sat on the edge of his mind the night before, tendrils of warm, calm memories flowing from him to Jim _ .  _

Before Jim could let that realization leak across his face, Spock said flatly, “How did you know Yara was down there?”

“If you’re talking about Bilquis’ sister, I’ll kill her myself,” said Bones coolly, stabbing at his readings. 

“Her ring,” said Jim. “She’s got a big sapphire ring.”  _ Was Spock still hanging out in his head?  _ Shaking himself, Jim said, “It doesn’t matter anyway! The point is there’s another bomb under the city somewhere, Yara’s going with Bilquis so they can  _ escape,  _ which means this whole place is about to be blown sky high!” 

“Q’s in on it?” Bones wanted to know. “That doesn’t sound like Q.”

“I don’t think she is,” said Jim. 

“Ambassador Bilquis appeared surprised and dismayed when she discovered the true nature of the heat signature,” Spock agreed, surprising Jim; Spock had not seemed inclined to like her at all. “If she indeed is part of the conspiracy, she played her part extremely well, but it is unlikely that she assisted us to merely stop our progress. She had several opportunities to kill both Jim and I, but took none of them, and she was instrumental in our escape.”

“We’ve got to find Chekov and somebody who knows this city,” said Jim. “Then we’ve got to disable it, and  _ actually  _ disable it instead of just taking out the reactant.”

“You are doing none of those things,” said Bones. “You are staying right there and then I’m dragging you back to the Enterprise and you’re going on medical leave for a month straight.” 

“Bones, first of all, I’m perfectly fine,” said Jim impatiently. “Second of all, do  _ you  _ know how to disable a bomb?”

“I know how to save your life,” retorted Bones. “That’s a hell of a lot harder.”

“ _ Bones,”  _ said Jim, and another knock came at the door. 

Bones glared at Jim before stalking over to the door again. Throwing it open, he snarled, “ _ WHAT?” _

Jim let out a snort of laughter when Chekov, quailing, squeaked, “Um. I can be coming back later?”

_____________

Chekov had readings that correlated with Jim’s theory: despite the bomb no longer giving off the toxic charges that had likely been the cause of the melting of the river, the heat signature was still present and active. 

“The readings are still as strong as ever around the city,” said Chekov, clearly baffled and not a little distressed. “The people are still suffering in the lungs.”

“That’s because there’s...well. Chekov, did they tell you it was a bomb?” Jim scrubbed a hand wearily over his face, and Spock felt a restless surge of concern. Jim’s face was still drawn and pale, with dark smudges under his eyes, clearly still in need of the rest his body required to return to fully functional. He was slumped against the pillows, Dr. McCoy jabbing a tricorder at him at regular intervals. Spock was at Jim’s right shoulder and highly unlikely to move from that position for quite some time. 

At Chekov’s nod, Jim said, “Well, kiddo, there’s another one. And it’s somewhere in this city.”

Chekov’s eyes grew round. “But this is making sense! That is making the people sick! Their lungs are not being used to the toxins and the gases being released during the construction, from the volcano.”

“You got it.” Jim nodded. “Chekov, can you trace it if you know it’s in the city?”

“I can, but I am thinking I already know where it is.”

Jim lifted an eyebrow. Spock had a grim suspicion that he already knew the location of the bomb as well, due to the likelihood of maximum damage, convenience of access, and the ease of deception. Not to mention that frankly, due to overwhelming evidence, he was starting to believe in bad luck. 

Chekov looked apologetic. “It is...somewhere under our feet. Many floors down, but this compound is wery large. It is down there though, I am sure of it.” 

“Of course it is,” said Dr. McCoy, and Spock repressed a sigh. “Of  _ course  _ it is.” 

____________

“You’ve  _ got  _ to be kidding me.” 

“I am unlikely to joke about such a matter,” said Spock evenly, his eyes scanning the screens. All of Chekov’s compiled data and readings marched in neat lines in front of them, perfectly lining up with the information gathered from their visit to the generator. 

Dr. McCoy was standing protectively over Jim, who had, through sheer willpower and the persuasive power of pure, repeated insistence, wrestled his way out of bed and Dr. McCoy’s threats that he would keep Jim on bed rest for the rest of his life. He was in fresh clothes, still looking rumpled and tired, but alert. Dr. McCoy had all but shoved him into the nearest chair and thrown a blanket over his legs once they’d reached the data room.

“That thing is massive,” said Dr. McCoy bluntly. “How in the hell did they even get it down there?”

“Spite,” suggested Jim absentmindedly, leaning forward. “Is that how big the one was in Tungsted?”

“We have no way of knowing how large that bomb was due to the fact that we did not know where it started and ended,” answered Spock. “However, inferring from your accounts and personal experience, I would assume they are about the same size.”

“It takes up nearly the entire basement,” said Chekov wonderingly, scanning through his blueprints of the building, neatly taken from the databases available. “There are three chambers, all of which are emitting these gases.”

“Reactants,” said Jim grimly. “Reactants and stimulants. This bomb is...well. When you’re planning on cutting a hole in an entire planet, I guess it does need to be that big.”

“So the question is,” said Dr. McCoy into the silence that followed Jim’s statement, “How do we turn it off?”

Jim sat back in his chair, his jaw set. “Bombs are easy enough to disable, Bones. I think the real question here,” he said, voice bleak, “is how much time we have.”

There was a long, tense silence as the implications of Jim’s question sunk in. 

“Less than an hour,” said a voice behind them. They all turned. 

Ambassador Bilquis, her golden eyes laced with something akin to panic, her fists clenched tightly, repeated, “We have forty-seven minutes.”

___________

Jim tried again, the third time. “Q.”

She flexed her jaw, her eyes fixed forward, on the turbolift doors. Spock and Bones were in the other one. They were heading down to the base floor, where they were going to disable a bomb, because, as Jim had forcibly reminded Bones, they were the only ones who could get close to it without their lungs immediately collapsing. And it was going to take three of them, one in each chamber, to pull apart the entire bomb. Not to mention the threat of more Lorveians, which was why Bilquis was with them, two phasers strapped to her hips. She looked so dangerous that Jim had a feeling that the Lorveians would rather face the bomb than her. 

Bones had levelled Jim with a look that should have fried off Jim’s eyebrows before saying flatly that he was going, too. Jim had had the good sense not to argue. 

He’d tried to give Spock a reassuring glance, but Spock’s body had been hard, his eyes inscrutable, hands knotted behind his back. 

It was never a good thing when Bones  _ and  _ Spock were angry with him. 

Chekov was staying aboveground to monitor their progress, watching and making sure no one accidentally tripped a partial switch. He’d finally hacked into the basement’s mainframe system, and while that didn’t give him direct access to the bomb, it was pretty close. And now he had blueprints, thanks to Bilquis.

It turned out Yara hadn’t told Bilquis she wouldn’t be meeting her at the western part of the city. When Bilquis had arrived, the fact that no one was there had seemed suspicious; when she questioned her escorts, none of them had been able to give her satisfactory answers. 

Wary, she had gone back to her transporter and looked for logs of her sister’s comings and goings. There were no records anywhere.

Finally, she had gone back to HQ. When she’d searched for any of her sister’s doings, she had been able to find none. Her location had been erased from databases. It was like she didn’t exist on the planet. A ghost. 

Bilquis had gone to her sister’s chambers, unable to reason exactly  _ why  _ she was suddenly afraid, so afraid to find what she thought she was going to find— 

She’d forced her way in and found Yara gone. 

Yara hadn’t covered her tracks inside her own chambers, most likely confident that she was, at last, stepping into the final part of her plan. Bilquis found copies of the maps that Jim had seen in the control room scattered across her sitting room couch. From there, suspicions building, Bilquis had hacked her way into her sister’s computer database and found enough treason to put her sister away for several lifetimes, the least of which were the bomb and generator blueprints. 

“They are after the spores.” Her voice was cold, hard, as distant and impersonal as when her countrymen had been murdered. Jim’s heart clenched for her: her planet in danger, her sister suddenly ripped from her forever. “It’s not just for the Lorveians. They’re on her side, yes, but she’s got buyers, bidders.” She looked at Jim, her eyes desolate. “Klingons, Jim. They’re Klingons.”

Jim felt a shudder go down his spine. With a chemical weapon like that— 

“They’re willing to pay her even more than what the treasure down there is worth for the spores.”

“Then we’re going,” said Jim, matching her cold voice with his determined one. “We’re going right now. Chekov, with these blueprints, can you walk us through it from up here?”

Chekov had bitten his lip, scanning them with the speed and practice of someone who devoured entire textbooks in hours. “I think so, yes,” he said after a moment.

“All right,” said Jim, his captain’s voice ready, commanding. “Bones, Spock, Q, with me. We’re going to disable a bomb.”

Now, Bilquis abruptly turned to him so fast he had to step away from her. Turbulence radiated off every line of her body. “Don’t,” she said, fast and hard, her eyes bright. “ _ Don’t.  _ You could have died because of her. My sister almost killed all of us, and I  _ brought  _ you here, and now my  _ home  _ is about to be torn to shreds. You could die. We could all die, right here, right now, because of her resentment, because of her  _ greed.”  _

Jim stared at her, at a loss. “Did you know?” he asked finally, helplessly.

Bilquis’ eyes filled with tears, and her face crumpled. Just as quickly, however, she rallied, blinking away her tears and straightening her shoulders. “No,” she said. “Not about this. But I know what’s in my sister’s heart. It… it isn’t good, Jim.” She lifted her chin, eyes brilliant with sorrow, fixed on a spot over Jim’s shoulder. “It isn’t,” she repeated, her voice so soft it was nearly a whisper. “But I didn’t think it was this.” 

Before Jim could try and offer words of comfort, she swiveled to face forward again, muscles tense, ready. 

“Now,” she said, lifting her chin as the doors hissed open, “We stop my planet’s destruction.”

_______________

They were all connected to Chekov via comms, who had their vitals and current location up on one of his screens and a series of blueprints on another. They were essentially walking in blind, but with so little time to prepare, there wasn’t really much they could do about their lack of knowledge. Chekov seemed to realize how dire their situation was, that he was their singular light in a dark room: his voice was uncharacteristically serious, and he hesitated slightly before giving anybody an answer, as though he were triple-checking everything before responding. 

There were thirty-one minutes left until the reactants discharged, triggered a series of stimuli, and blew a great gaping hole in the city followed by six more explosions that would rip colossal holes in the T’lng Plain, releasing a series of poisonous spores that would kill Spock if he was still on the planet. And everybody else. 

Jim set his teeth against that thought and lifted his phaser. He was still weak and shaky from his fever, but he could stay standing, and he could sure as hell shoot somebody in the face if needed. 

They all held their phasers at the ready as they rounded every corner, shifting formation ceaselessly, moving constantly around each other. This far down in the compound, even the electric lights flickered slightly. Shadows moved eerily, making everyone tense, nerves stretched thin as wires. It was cold. The ground floor was all narrow, slick hallways, naked pipes snaking along the walls. Jim almost wanted it to blow up so he could stop feeling so claustrophobic. 

“Sven has started evacuating the compound,” said Bilquis, relinquishing her hold on a separate comm in favor of shifting her other phaser up. “He’s doing it as discreetly as possible, but with no way to contact Yara it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not she’s caught on to what we’re doing.”

Jim inched around another corner, Spock so close to his shoulder he felt a soft breath as Spock exhaled on his neck. “With any luck, she’ll catch on after thirty more minutes are up,” he muttered, peering down the hallway and listening for any sound. There wasn’t any, besides their own breathing and the beating of Jim’s heart in his ears. The hallway branched off in either direction.

Chekov’s voice piped up over their comms: “ _ Two of the chambers are to your left. One is further down the right. You will be needing to split up.” _

The four of them all glanced at each other. 

Jim said, “Spock, with me. Bilquis, Bones—be careful.”

There may have been more to say on such an occasion, but there were twenty-nine minutes and lives to save and in reality, they had all discovered that the best course of action in times such as these was to pretend they were all going to be fine, and there would be an easy reunion later, as easy as this not-goodbye was. There were no pirates—at least not yet. 

So Bones just gave him a long, hard look and nodded, and Bilquis led the way down to the left. 

Spock followed Jim as Jim led the way down to the right, ears straining for any noise. He kept waiting for the sparse doors they passed to fly open and release their enemies in waves of poison-laden waves. 

The hallways, however, remained deserted. It made Jim’s muscles coil into hard knots, tense waves of anticipation rolling over his skin. 

Chekov’s voice told them when they reached the first chamber. The second chamber was another three yards down. 

There were twenty-four minutes left. 

Chekov, again. “ _ I am disabling the alarm systems. One moment. After this, the doors will open, and we will begin disabling.” _

Jim glanced at Spock. Spock was already looking at him. 

“I’ll take this one,” said Jim, heading toward the second door. Before he could get far, however, Spock grabbed his arm.

Jim looked back at him. 

They may have been deep below surface level in a metal basement on a snow-laden planet, but the story was an old one, the record on repeat: there was trouble, and in the middle of it, there was Commander Spock and Captain Kirk. In the middle of everything, there was a human called Jim and a Vulcan called Spock.

Spock and Jim dove into danger and continued on. Spock and Jim dropped precariously into caves full of hay and emerged with needles. They found hope. They carried on. They did not talk about it afterwards. 

Jim had never changed the story because he was afraid that if he did, if he interfered with history’s capricious repetition of the story, it would disappear—and then it would just be Jim Kirk, in a hallway full of doors waiting to unleash monsters. 

Jim stared at Spock’s dark eyes, waiting, confused, because this wasn’t part of the story. There was uncertainty in the shape of Spock’s mouth, heat in his fingers wrapped around Jim’s arm, and a charge in the air. Spock’s fingers were nearly at his wrist, and that almost-contact made Jim twitch, always wanting, always hungry for Spock’s skin on his. 

There were too many unsaid things in the silence between them. They filled Jim’s head, rose to the surface of his mouth, begged to be said out loud, finally— 

But Jim was nothing if not practiced in the art of refraining. An interesting thing, perhaps, about the boy who was called reckless, stubborn, impulsive, emotional: there were things—many things—he did not say. The world saw a man bold in his opinions, occasionally brash in his expression of them, constantly embroiled in conflicts because of his desire to uphold  _ right _ , no matter the consequences, a man emotionally and brilliantly driven—but Jim Kirk did, in fact, have a filter. Though perhaps everyone except Leonard McCoy would have doubted it (and even McCoy had his limits), Jim really did have things sitting in the darkness of his body that did not see the light of day. Like the fear that even if he did give everything he had, he would still find, like he had many times before, that it was not enough. 

So: he didn’t say. And he didn’t say. Because he knew himself enough to know that even if he was capable of isolation, he was not capable of  _ moderation _ . 

Thus: Jim Kirk said nothing. 

But Spock did, and the story changed.

“Two nights ago you asked me if I was troubled by nightmares.” Even if there was hesitation that only Jim could see in the subtle shift of his face, there was none in his voice. “Vulcans are not able to have nightmares, as you are most likely aware, due to the fact that they do not require sleep as humans do.”

Jim blinked, but tipped his head to the side to indicate that he was following. He was, of course, willing to hear Spock out, but whatever he had been expecting Spock to say (something along the lines of “be careful,” or “refrain from causing yourself further injury,” both of which he had said to Jim on multiple occasions) this was very far from it. 

And also Spock had usually released him at this point.

Spock glanced at the door that was waiting for him, then at the door waiting for Jim. “When it was clear in my childhood that my sparse sleep patterns could be aggravated by disturbing dreams, my father, through research and my mother’s personal experience, developed a meditation routine that allowed me to dissipate my own nightmares. It included finding the direct source of the fear that caused the nightmare and accepting and releasing the fear, allowing it to stop perturbing my sleep.”

Jim stayed silent. He still couldn’t see where Spock was going with this. 

Spock met his eyes again. “Up until several years ago, I had not had any unsettling dreams since I was a child.”

Jim flipped through several explanations for this and came up with the fastest and easiest solution: Spock’s planet’s destruction. Of course that kind of trauma could result in nightmares, even for a Vulcan whose prized and rigid control and logic allowed him to accept every kind of anguish and still walk serenely through life. 

This still couldn’t tell him what Spock was trying to  _ say  _ to him, though.

Spock didn’t say anything for a moment, and Jim knew he was trying to gather his thoughts. Usually Jim could nudge him along at this point, because by this point he  _ usually _ knew what the hell Spock was thinking. 

Finally, Spock said, “The only unsettling dream I cannot exhaust is the memory of the moment of your death in the warp core.”

All of Jim’s thoughts careened out of existence. He could only stare. 

“Last night was nearly a repetition of that experience,” continued Spock, and though his words were still neat and even and elegant, perfectly expressed, there was something swimming along the edges of every syllable, something Jim had never heard before and so could not name. “I would...prefer it...if today did not result in—”

_ “Got it!”  _ said Chekov’s triumphant voice over the comms, and with an audible, metallic click, both doors swung open.

Jim didn’t say  _ if you died it would destroy me.  _

He didn’t say 

_ ...do you feel that way too? _

What he said was, “This is gonna work.” Then, after a pause, “Be careful.” 

Spock looked at him, and Jim looked back. He wasn’t sure how the story had changed, but he got that feeling again: six inches to the left. 

Then Spock released him. There was still something electric in the air, almost tangible: an empty field, about to be struck by lightning. 

Jim strode forward, away from Spock, and into his chamber. 

______________

There was a restlessness under Spock’s skin that had certainly been there before, though perhaps not to this degree. 

Through sheer force of will and decades of meticulous practice, he neatly organized his thoughts in order of priority. Jim perhaps should have been lower on the priority list, but at this point, Spock had simply allowed for the shift and kept his momentum and focus on acting within those parameters. There was no “should” with Jim, he had discovered. He simply accepted the chaotic surge Jim brought to his life. Acceptance allowed him to keep his life in stability.

Even if that so-called stability had eluded him since Tungsted. 

The chamber was larger than Spock had anticipated. The ceiling was higher than those of the cramped hallways—which, Spock reasoned, was fortunate for the Lorveians and Yara, because the chamber needed to be of a sufficient size to fit the thick cables, the control panels, ropes of thinner wires, and the small generator of the bomb stimulus. Spock donned the gloves that they had all obtained in an attempt to protect them from the worst of electrical burns. It was eerily quiet, the silence of technology, and subtle waves of oxygen interference washed gently through the air, rippling off the cables. This, Spock realized, was why no Jadis could come down. 

Chekov directed him to the center control panel. Spock estimated that they had a mere twenty point four minutes to disable the entirety of the bomb. 

He slid all other thought neatly out of his head and concentrated solely on the task at hand. Chekov’s voice in his ear, in all their ears, directed them through the control panel.

It was precise work: organization of the bomb’s construction had perhaps not been a priority, but the composition was thorough, and the blueprints of the bomb were detailed. 

Spock slid the control panel out of the way. Chekov’s voice was low, focused, quick. He could hear the cadence of Jim’s breathing as he concentrated, the soft, occasional grumbles of Dr. McCoy. As one, they slid their hands into the control panels and emerged with a thick tangle of wires that disappeared into a pipe in the floor, presumably connecting them all together, then to the reactants. The first task was this: to separate them from each other. After that, disable each stimulus individually—and in order. This was where their assignments were at their most dangerous, because if it was not disabled precisely and within a definitive time span, the stimulus would still compress and then release, which, while perhaps not achieving maximum damage, would still result in the death of whoever was in the room and, depending on which bombs were deactivated, perhaps cause the chain of bombs to begin exploding. 

Spock’s fastidious mind ticked away the time. His hands worked nimbly, separating wires and dislodging connectors a fourth of a second behind Chekov’s instructions. No one disturbed him. The silence, but for the communicator at his ear, was absolute. While he was aware of the pressure of the situation, he did not allow it to affect the steadiness of his fingers, the calm dismantling of his explosive. 

The last instruction was given after a long pause.  _ Cut it.  _

Spock, aware that if it was the wrong wire in his hand he would face serious and even deadly burns, did. 

A beat of silence. McCoy muttered a heartfelt curse. 

They were only halfway through their task. 

Chekov took a deep breath, then pointed them behind the control center, a rather tight fit for Spock’s mass that forced him to carefully relocate the control center a few inches forward. This done, he carefully crouched down, neatly hidden behind the control center and surrounded by snarls of cables. 

The first step of the process was repetition: identify and untangle specific wires. 

After this, however, their paths diverged. McCoy’s chamber had to be disengaged first. Then Jim’s. Then Spock’s. 

Spock held his body still, muscles coiled and tensed, waiting. He listened to the sounds and the instructions as McCoy slowly disabled his explosive. The end goal was to retrieve what Jim had yanked from the console at the Troll’s Bridge: the andaboleite. The difference was that here, the andaboleite was much bigger, perhaps nearly a foot in diameter. 

There were thirteen point six minutes left. 

It was performed successfully. McCoy swore several times in relief before Chekov indicated that it was Jim’s turn. 

There were twelve point eight minutes remaining. 

Spock listened to the cadence of Jim’s breathing. 

There was a low, indistinguishable sound. Spock sat up straight. 

He listened, ears straining for any noise. 

It came again, too faint for human ears: the clicking, eerily musical sound of the Lorvey. 

Jim finished his process. 

Someone was coming down the hallway.

He knew it was unlikely that it was Bilquis or McCoy, as they were far enough away that they could not have reached him in the time between disabling the bomb and leaving the chamber. Therefore— 

“ _ Commander Spock. Are you ready?” _

Spock said, very quietly, “Someone is coming.”

Spock heard Jim’s sharp intake of breath, and forced himself to focus on the cables in his hands. He could not stop now; he would have to trust Jim to watch his back.

______________

Jim heard Chekov’s voice, panicked and high. “ _ Sir, if we do not disable your mechanism in the next seven minutes—”  _

“Chekov,  _ go.”  _ Jim snarled into his comm as he kicked cables out of his way, darting to the door. “I’ll cover Spock. Bones, Q? Where are you?”

“ _ Dealing with some shit, Kirk.”  _ Bilquis’s voice was filled with vitality, seething with the energy she used to get when she was practicing her judo. “ _ We’ll get there when we get there. How about you just shoot what moves, think you can do that?” _

“Fuck you,” answered Jim. Then he stopped.

Pressing himself flat against the wall, he tuned out what was going on in his comm—Chekov’s voice, hissing quiet instructions, as though whoever was about to interrupt Spock could hear him. 

Jim peered carefully around the corner, out the door, into the hallway.

The flickering lights were ghastly on Yara’s face, lending a flat, pale look to her black skin. Her eyes looked one-dimensional—blank, dark holes, so different from the cheerful girl he’d seen that morning. She had two pirates with her, both of whom had their head wraps off, and Jim wished immediately they didn’t. their skin underneath was hard, carapace-like, blue-black and reflecting the light. Their eyes, however, too big for their faces, were a complete, glossy black, and their faces tapered into a deadly, curved beak where their mouths and noses should have been. With a shudder that went down to his toes, Jim realized that they weren’t blinking, and he couldn’t tell exactly where they were looking. 

Jim watched as Yara’s eyes swiveled around the hallway, sliding right over where he hid in the shadow of the doorway. 

Without warning she kicked the door to Spock’s chamber open. 

Jim locked all of his muscles into place to keep himself from moving.

He knew Spock was behind the central console, which meant that Yara couldn’t see him. If he went out now, he would blow his cover and then probably Spock’s, because there was no way he could take on three pirates alone; nausea was already rolling his stomach and his head was swimming from standing too long. His best (and worst) bet was to stay exactly where he was, and hope to God Yara didn’t look for too long. 

Jim stared at Yara as she and her two companions slunk inside. The lights flickered again, seizing. No sound came from the chamber. Jim’s heart was beating in his ears. 

Yara emerged again. The plated gold around her neck flashed as she turned to continue on down the hallway, heading toward Jim. The Lorveians’ eyes stared out, unmoving, cold and vacant. 

Jim, with the suffocating feeling that they were going to hear the blood moving through his veins, shrank back into his chamber, pressing himself to the left of the open door. 

There was a beat of awful silence—he’d forgotten how silently they moved, despite the wrongness of their gait—and then Yara’s hand, long fingers stretching and grasping—the door moved open with that hand— 

Jim stared straight ahead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Yara’s head come into the room, jutting and angular. 

He watched through his peripheral vision as she swept the room with her eyes. He knew that if he looked at her, she would see him move. So he didn’t, his gaze fixed on a tangle of wires, holding his breath. 

Her head retracted. They walked past.

Jim’s body sagged in relief, and he let out the breath he was holding. 

“ _ Jim?”  _ prodded McCoy.

Jim jabbed at his comm. “Yeah. I’m here.” He paused. 

“ _ And?”  _ snapped McCoy—he was obviously tetchy about the fact that Jim wasn’t lying prone in a hospital bed somewhere.

“Hang on.” 

He peered carefully around the corner. 

The Lorvey and Yara had stopped in the middle of the hallway. She was looking at something in her hands.

One of the Lorvey’s heads began to turn. Jim pulled back inside of his chamber, his fists clenched. 

When he stuck his head back outside a few moments later, all three of them were gone.

He blinked. There was no way they could have just  _ walked  _ out of sight—the nearest corner was far down the hallway, too far for them to round it before he’d stuck his head back out. 

Jim poked his comm. “Chekov, Spock, how are we doing?”

It was Bones who answered, because Chekov was still sprinting through Spock’s instructions. “ _ Jim, what are you doing?” _

Jim hesitated before saying, “I’m not sure there are only three chambers.”

Chekov’s voice faltered. 

“Lieutenant,” said Jim. “Keep your course. Stand by. I’ll investigate. As soon as you’re finished with Commander Spock, run scans over the basement. Make sure we got everything down here.”

“ _ Aye, Captain,”  _ Chekov spared enough breath for before returning to Spock’s instructions.

“ _ Jim,”  _ said Bones warningly.

“Stand by,” repeated Jim.

He crept down the corridor. The lights flickered alarmingly, the shadows growing, and this time, sparks drifted down from the light above his head. He watched them fall, then stopped exactly where he had seen Yara and her Lorvey stop.

He looked at the wall on his right, opposite where the other chambers were. He touched it gently, carefully, feeling it with his hand. 

Near the middle, he felt the wall give, just slightly. He pushed in before he really thought about it. 

The metal part of the wall slid out of the way, seamless and even. Behind it, a thick glass door protected the inside—or the outside, depending on how you looked at it. 

Jim stared.

He knew it was a bomb. It was just that it didn’t look anything like the others, which was throwing him off. 

They weren’t looking at him, so before he could think twice about what he was doing, he hit the mechanism to open the glass door and slid inside.

The glass door hissed shut behind him, and Jim dove for the boxes next to the door. Safely behind them, he peered over the top of one, crouched in an uncomfortable angle that pressed painfully into his still-twinging side. 

He was reminded, briefly, of when the Kelvin Memorial Archive was destroyed in London. The forensics team at the time had discovered that an agent’s Starfleet Academy ring had been transformed into a stimulus, triggered by nothing but a glass of water. 

Jim reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of stone the size of a robin’s egg. He’d left the big piece of andaboleite in its chamber after he’d disengaged it; he’d been in too much of a hurry to stop them from disturbing Spock to take it with him. The small piece still glowed an eerie blue, still active, still ready to blow from when he’d pulled it out of the console at the Troll’s Bridge.

He stared over the box at the bomb.

It wasn’t an overly complicated-looking piece of machinery, though it was large. The snarls of cables weren’t weighing this one down, and he found the reactant chamber easily enough because it was in the middle of it and also it was open, clearly waiting for something. Jim estimated it was around nine feet high, around six feet wide. 

It was overkill, Jim thought, unless you factored in the idea that Yara wanted to destroy the entire compound along with ripping a hole in the planet. Jim could relate wanting to blow things up, but this seemed a little much. 

A little nasty voice in his head pointed out that if he’d been given the chance to demolish his childhood home, if he’d been  _ stuck there, _ he would have taken it in an instant. 

He brushed off the voice and concentrated.

Yara was standing with her original two Lorvey plus six others. She was speaking with someone, but the voice that responded came through a communicator, and it wasn’t in the language of the Jadis, or being filtered through a universal translator. 

It was Klingon. She was speaking Klingon.

Jim’s comm beeped. “ _ Jim, where the hell are you? What’s going on?” _

As though Bones’ voice had somehow alerted her, Yara closed her communications. Without turning around, she said in a high, clear voice, “Hello, Captain Kirk.” 

He stared at her back. 

In a shifting, terrible ripple of movement, all of the Lorvey swung around to face him. Her two attendants’ eyes stared at him, unblinking, reflective and empty. 

Jim straightened very slowly, his eyes flicking over his opponents. He didn’t say anything.

Yara turned to face him, staring straight into his eyes—just as bold as her sister, just as fearless. 

“Welcome to the basement,” she said, tipping her head to one side, almost lazily. It was her eyes that gave her away—Jim had learned how to read gold, and hers were full of molten fury. There was nothing of the sweet, charming facade she had given him when they’d first arrived. “You could have at least had the decency to die upstairs, where the furniture is nicer.”

“Sorry to inconvenience.” Chekov’s voice had gone silent. Spock had finished disabling his chamber’s stimulus. “Got something you need to do down here?”

“A small checklist.” Her tone was still conversational—remarkably blase for someone who was standing in front of a bomb. “You’ve done a job of trying to stop me. Rather admirable, actually. Too bad you and your crew and the rest of Starfleet are a bunch of arrogant bastards—a few successful missions and you think you’re a hero. You think you know the difference between right and wrong.”

“I think I know that killing hundreds of people and making deals with Klingons is wrong,” said Jim coldly. “Care to debate that?”

Her spine straightened very slowly; her body coiled. She looked like Bilquis, but without all of Bilquis’ regal empathy—she looked like a distorted, cruel shadow of another woman, stripped of her goodness, anger lining every one of her tight muscles, bitterness leaking from her ears. Where Bilquis was a lion, Yara was a snake. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what these people are.  _ I’m  _ wrong for killing people for a buck? You should see what they do. These people would rather have jewelry on their hands and gold on their windows than anything else. They’re greedy and selfish and they do not deserve your pity, nor your assistance.”

“So you’re going to blow up half their planet. Remind me who you’re calling selfish?” 

She didn’t answer. She looked at him for a moment, then made a horrible, clicking sound deep in her throat.

The Lorvey were upon him in an instant.

He had no way of retaliating—he was simply too tired, and then one of them landed a brutal kick, quick enough that it was completely unforeseen, on an undefended flank. It was a crushing blow, and it landed on Kirk’s side, right into the still-healing wound.

Jim heard the sound he made as though he wasn't in his own body. Stars swam across his vision, and he managed to stay standing, but it was a near thing. Pain tore through his left side, and he lurched backwards instinctively, straight into another Lorvey.

All of its limbs bent the wrong way. They snarled around his body, caging him in, like a massive, thin spider. 

He jerked, but it was no use. Another Lorvey reached for him, and he cringed away from it, but it simply grabbed him and hauled him forward, the other Lorvey wrapped around him notwithstanding. 

He was deposited in front of Yara, forced to his knees. With two Lorvey literally on top of him, he felt claustrophobic, paralyzed. He hadn’t ever  _ wanted  _ to know how insects felt while spiders wrapped them up just before eating them, but by God, did he know now. 

One arm—leg? Oh, God—crept to his throat, and he fought the urge to lurch backwards. If he did that, it would put him closer to the thing’s  _ mouth.  _

A single talon slid out. It touched his throat, forced his head up. 

Yara was smiling at him, a cold, twisted sneer. She pulled out her phaser. “Useful, aren’t they? Did you know they live in the Troll’s Bridge? That’s why people were dying there, not because of the terrain. But you already figured that out, didn’t you?” She leaned down very close to him, putting her face right in front of his. She was still smiling. “Jim? Can I call you Jim? Wanna know how I found them?” She reached out and touched her finger very gently to the Lorvey’s limb. “Tectonic plates are a bitch, aren’t they? And my bombs needed testing. And,” she shrugged again, light, uncaring, “turns out they needed feeding. They’ll do anything to be fed, Jim. Anything at all.” 

Jim stared at her, horror creeping up his spine.

She smirked at him. “Do you want to know what they eat, Jim?”

“I’d rather not know, actually,” said Jim. “If it’s all the same to you.”

Yara reached out and pulled his hair, yanking his head back and exposing his throat. “People,” she said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” muttered Jim.

“Step  _ away  _ from Captain Kirk,” said a new voice, ringing and stern. 

Jim’s heart lurched. Phaser fire zipped through the room, neatly downing three Lorvey before Yara straightened and drawled, “Do you think I can shoot Captain Kirk before the talons get him, Commander Spock? Or should I let you watch what it looks like when a human person is eaten alive?”

Jim hadn’t seen Spock look this angry in a long, long time. There was nothing especially different about his expression, per say, but the lines of his face were harsh and his eyes were black with fury. He lowered his phaser, still staring Yara down in a very formidable, very Vulcan way. 

Jim’s hand closed around the andaboleite in his pocket. It pulsed slightly at his touch.

“The consequences of your actions will be far more significant if you are responsible for the death of a Starfleet captain,” warned Spock, who was purposefully not looking at Jim.

There it was again. It was such a bizarrely human, oddly childish response, as though by refusing to look, it wouldn’t be entirely real. As though an unavoidable outcome could be circumvented. 

The explosion of this bomb wouldn’t trigger the others. If Chekov had done his job properly, and Jim strongly suspected he had, the other bombs would be safely disabled, and this one, if detonated with a small dose of andaboleite, would have a concentrated, quick blast. Simple and effective. It wouldn’t even completely destroy the room. Just, probably, everyone in it. 

It would even be small enough, Jim supposed distantly, to spare the Vulcan standing in the doorway, too far away to be properly killed in the blast. 

Jim stared at Spock’s eyes, his ears, his shoulders. In his head he rewrote the story, and it continued indefinitely, with a human named Jim and a Vulcan named Spock forever swimming through stars. In his head, he told Spock everything, and his head, Spock smiled. 

In reality, he pulled out the andaboleite. In reality, he gauged the strength of the bomb one more time in relation to Spock, just to be sure. In reality, he began to slowly reach his arm around for his phaser, still in its place at his back. 

Jim said, “Why are you doing this to your sister?”

Yara’s body froze, her fingers locked around her phaser. Something flickered in her eyes: something a little human flitting across that twisted, serpentine expression. 

“I could maybe get doing it to them,” he said. “Maybe. But she’s your family.”

Yara’s mouth twisted into an ugly snarl, and in the very edge of it, he saw her sadness, her terrible uncertainty. Spock’s eyes flicked to Jim’s face. 

It was Jim’s turn not to look.

Yara said, “She doesn’t understand.”

“I don’t either. All for money? You could live with doing this for  _ money?”  _

“Money? Yes. Absolutely. Incidentally, however, they also let my parents die._” _Yara’s voice changed again, becoming sneering, disdainful. She’d ironed out the traces of sadness in a moment, dispelled between one second and the next: a movement too practiced to be improvised. “Bilquis ever tell you that? They let my mother die with my father because they couldn’t stand that she married one of _you. _They hate humans, and every other species, for that matter. I’m a half-breed they never wanted, and so is Bilquis. Oh, Bilquis tried, though, didn’t she?” Yara’s eyes glowed again, rippling with old, wide-open anger. “She became successful, brilliant.” She laughed, a quick, cross sound. “They still hate her. They’ll still drive her off at the first sign of trouble.”

“So you’re becoming a murderer.” Jim’s fingers brushed his phaser. The Lorvey had not moved, either one of them, both of them still twisted all around him.

Yara’s smile crawled back across her face, unpleasant and triumphant. “It is,” she said, with an elegant shrug, snake through and through, “ _ a lot  _ of money, Jim.”

She turned away, and said, “And honestly. It isn’t even  _ hard  _ to harvest these. The mines are fairly  _ swimming  _ with these lovely things.”

Jim’s entire body went cold as she reached over and pulled a canister into sight.

In it, miniscule white specks floated around and around, as though on some invisible current. They glowed slightly, looking almost like tiny fireflies, except Jim knew what they were, and they were not fireflies. 

Yara set down the canister. “Experiment time, I think,” she said pensively. “Two birds with one stone. I let my Lorvey feed on  _ you,  _ and I let  _ these—”  _ she reached for the cap of it— “feed on him.” She flicked a dismissive glance at Spock. “Between the two of you, we should have some particularly gruesome deaths, I should think.”  _ _

Spock said, “You would be just as affected.” He’d erased all traces of emotion from his voice. He sounded observant, detached.

Jim’s hand closed around his phaser. 

Yara chuckled, and hit the plates of gold around her neck. In an instant, a sleek, glossy helmet encased her head.

She tapped it with one long fingernail. “Nice try, Commander,” she said, her voice muffled by the helmet. “I’ll think about letting your crew live. Or maybe I’ll just summon my Klingons now and see how it goes for everybody.” She reached for the canister. “Either way, boys. Time’s up.”

It was, thought Jim. He aimed his phaser behind him and shot the Lorvey clenched around him. 

The Lorvey’s piercing click sounded right in his ears, and its limbs jerked out, reminiscent of an insect in its death throes. The second Lorvey hissed and lunged for him.

Jim didn’t need that much time. It just took one slight underhand throw, quick and light. 

Jim’s world narrowed down to two things: the small stone sailing toward the open chamber, and Spock’s voice, terrible and loud. “ _ No!” _

The stone disappeared. A second later, the world exploded. 

____________

Bilquis said, “Enterprise, are you there?”

There was a crackle, and then a, “ _ Yes.” _

Chekov said something rapidly that Bilquis didn’t catch because she was too busy getting one of those godawful  _ things  _ from closing its too-long limbs around her. 

Chekov said, “Ambassador. We can beam you out if you—”

Bilquis ran. Leonard McCoy was swearing copiously next to her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said crisply into her comm. “Leave me here with my people. Get them out, Lieutenant, and get them out  _ now.”  _

From a distance, she heard a tremendously loud boom, like a massive clap of thunder. 

__________

Spock was under the terrible impression that, though physically impossible, time had slowed down. 

He sat up, and glass drifted past him in shards, dust settled on his shoulders, on his clothes, in his hair. Noxious clouds of black smoke billowed all around him, lowering his visibility to nearly nothing. Distantly, he was aware that his ears were ringing. He had been thrown backwards by the force of the blast, and the debris was still raining down all around him. 

In the debris, tiny, glowing pinpricks lifted from their shattered cage. Acrid blue, they began to drift toward the lumps of bodies, toward him, in an inevitable, direct path.

He looked at them, watched the little blue lights begin to come for him, and thought about what would happen if they reached him, infested his body like a virus. They were the precise shade of Jim’s eyes. 

He staggered to his feet and made his way through the smoke, avoiding obstacles as best he could. He felt as though his brain had narrowed down to one focal point, and there was only one thing on his mind, and he had to get there, immediately, because— 

The analytical part of his brain, impossible to suffocate, observed coolly,  _ he is most likely already dead. _

He didn’t bother trying to refute it. He simply kept moving, because if Jim was— 

The miniscule blue lights had formed a body, like a swarm of wasps. It moved toward him, drifting, inexorable. 

He felt a familiar, full-body tug, heard the familiar high-pitched noise of beaming. 

_ No,  _ he thought, and he might have said it out loud, too. 

A jumble of thoughts and memories staggered through his mind, and as his hand reached out, as the cacophony of silver sparks swirled around him, all he could think about was another time, another place, when his hand reached out and missed, and he had lost someone else this way, too, left them behind while he was beamed safely back onboard, and he could not come back from that, not again, not— 

The clean, blindingly white lines of the ship materialized before his eyes, and he blinked as his pupils adjusted. His hand was still pointlessly outstretched. The spores were nowhere to be seen. 

And then he kept blinking, because laying on the ground in front of him, groaning slightly and covered in ash, was— 

“And we didn’t even need pliers,” said Jim, distractedly. He was staring at Spock, the blue of his eyes full of some unnamed emotion, and then his hand twitched and he let out a rushing breath and he reached thoughtlessly out to Spock. 

Spock was distantly aware of McCoy’s presence, and possibly Lieutenant Chekov’s, but that did not stop him from closing the distance between them in less than a second, falling to his knees, gripping at whatever was closest to him, Jim’s ankle and then his knee and then both of his forearms, and Jim had seized him back, gripping his shoulders— 

Their foreheads bumped clumsily together, and they stared at each other in shock. Spock could feel the rapid beat of Jim’s pulse under his hands, or perhaps it was his own. A trickle of blood slid down Jim’s face. 

“Jesus  _ Christ,”  _ snarled McCoy, and separated them. He began to yell out at the technicians, at Lieutenant Chekov, at everyone in the room, and did not stop yelling. More and more people began to filter into the room, attracted by the level of noise. 

Spock grabbed at Jim’s wrist until it was safely within his grasp. Jim was still staring at him, looking dazed.

“You’re bleeding,” said Jim. 

“That is likely,” agreed Spock. 

“Would the two of you  _ SHUT UP!”  _ bellowed McCoy. 

___________

Both of them were hustled off to medbay. Jim wasn’t sure he was ever going to see the light of day again, or any other part of the ship. 

“He’s  _ fine,  _ he’s much better off than  _ you  _ are, so will you stop looking around like a kicked puppy?” snapped Bones at one point, and Jim started. He hadn’t even realized he was looking for Spock in the chaos of the medical team around him. 

He’d been ripped lightly to shreds by the bomb— _ lightly— _ and his ears were still ringing. He’d been thrown backwards by the impossible force of the blast, and the heavy body of the Lorvey had landed on top of him, crushing him. It had also protected him from the worst of the shrapnel, so although he’d been pretty squished, he was also alive enough to recognize that he should be grateful he’d been squished. 

At one point, somebody tried to tell him what had happened on the planet below after they had beamed out, and Jim felt a brief moment of pity for that person, because McCoy looked up at them with murder in his eyes. He hadn’t even finished yelling for them to get out before they had vanished so quickly they might have been beamed out.

He drifted, after that. He remembered thinking he wanted breakfast. He remembered realizing that he hadn’t seen Spock for a while, and this worried him. He couldn’t remember why he was worried. Thoughts drifted, jagged, across his mind: a snow-covered field, on Jadis or on Tarsus, and explosions, from either the Enterprise fracturing in front of him or a bomb ripping a hole in the planet.

_ Did I kill anybody?  _ This question suddenly seemed very important, and he couldn’t remember if he’d said it out loud. 

Bones was talking in his ear, then, gentle and sure: “Nah, kid. Nobody important died, just a couple of those creepy crawlies. Not even Yara was irreversibly injured, which, honestly, is a crying shame in my book. Relax, Jim. You’re okay. Everybody’s okay. You didn’t even really blow anything up. Teenage you would be ashamed of you.”

Jim remembered thinking that Bones was soothing him, and when he tried to figure out why he was being soothed, he lost his grip on it and sank into sleep. 

____________

He woke up only once, the chaos from earlier gone. It was quiet in medbay, the only sound the gentle hum of machines. The lights had been dimmed. When he looked around, he found the answer to the question on the tip of his tongue: Spock was lying in a biobed not far from him, fast asleep. 

Jim had only seen Spock asleep a handful of times, and every time, his impression was the same: that Spock looked young and solemn while he slept. Jim could almost see the teenager that he had been, narrow and grave.

Jim watched the rise and fall of Spock’s chest until sleep overtook him again. 

____________

The next time Jim woke, Bones was there and Spock was gone. 

Bones jabbed at him with a tricorder. “I thought we were  _ disabling  _ the bombs, not  _ blowing them up.”  _

“Good morning to you, too,” muttered Jim, stretching a little and wincing. 

“Morning, huh,” said Bones, rolling his eyes. 

Jim blinked. “How long have I been out?”

Bones smirked at him and poked at his database, recording whatever he’d found by prodding Jim with his tech.

“Bones.”

Bones lifted one eyebrow and lowered it in response. 

“ _ Bones.”  _

“Where’s Spock?”

Bones lifted his eyes to Jim and let every ounce of his exasperation pour over his face. 

Jim grunted and shifted in his pillows. “Asshole.”

“He’s fine, you pathetic pipsqueak,” said McCoy, raising one pointed eyebrow at him. “The spores got out, but nothing touched him. You just rattled him pretty damn good with your little explosion trick.”

“Sorry,” said Jim, though Spock was nowhere in sight; he knew Spock was not the only one he’d rattled. 

“It’s okay,” said Bones, gruff. “Provided you don’t do it again. Ever. I’m too old for your near-death experiences and too young to lose my goddamn best friend, Jim.”

Jim smiled a little. “Duly noted.”

Going back to his PADD, Bones added conversationally, “Oh, and remember how I said weeks?”

“Bones.”

_ “Weeks.”  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey sweeties, first of all thank you so much for all being here!! I read all of your lovely darling notes and they make me so happy and wiggly inside. Thank you thank you thank you.   
Also if u so desire u can find me on tumblr at the-stars-will-do-the-telling.tumblr.com   
I adore you all!


	8. Chapter 8

_ _____________________________________________ _

_ But once in a while I trip up and _

_ I cross the line _

_ and I think of you _

_ -A. Z, K.E.H _

_ ________________________________________________ _

That night, Jim drowsed in medbay. He was still tired, but he didn’t want to be in medbay. He hated being in medbay, even if, somewhere deep inside of him that sounded suspiciously like Spock, he could admit that he still needed to be there, that he’d well and truly trashed his body enough to warrant the forced bedrest. 

He scowled weakly at the ceiling. He was half on the edge of sleep, which smeared his annoyance into something blurred around the edges, heavy like honey, but his dissatisfaction lingered in the smudged part of his brain that was still awake. It was terrible trying to sleep like that, and it made him tiredly grumpy.

The door to medbay slid open and shut, but Jim didn’t pay any attention to it. Probably one of the nurses come to check on the other patients. Besides, he was in a sectioned off part of medbay with the lights dimmed, a section that Bones had threatened to permanently engrave his name in if he didn’t stop “getting into trouble.”

Somebody stepped into Jim’s space, fluid and elegant. 

Jim heard his own voice, muzzy and faded around the edges. “Hey.”

“Jim,” greeted Spock very quietly, nearly part of the blue darkness. Jim could almost believe that Spock was a figment of his imagination. “I am sorry for disturbing you.”

“You’re not. Come in, ‘s wrong?” He lifted his head slightly, blinking. 

Spock came closer, and then, after a breath, a pause, folded himself down to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Jim didn’t know why Spock was here, but the annoyed, sick feeling that had clung to him like moss dissipated immediately. Sighing, he made more room for Spock.

________

Spock could still see the outline of Jim under his pile of blankets, the faint sheen of his hair. The medbay was silent except for the two of them. In the darkness, they felt like the only two beings in the universe, formed and held away from the rest of existence. 

Jim was barely awake. Spock could see him blinking slowly, each blink longer than the last. Even in the darkness, Spock knew what his eyes looked like. Spock would know him in the dark, in the light, at the end of the world; would know him even if he could not see him, would know him in a crowd of thousands. 

Jim shifted underneath his covers so he was more fully facing Spock. “How’s Jadis?” He was more tethered than he had been, but still worn down. 

“The bombs were successfully cleared out,” answered Spock softly. “Yara, I believe, was apprehended, and they are tracing her associates through her files. The chemical fallout is being cleared away, and their carbon footprint is being erased from the atmosphere, thus drastically lowering the lung contamination in the Jadis people. The fissure in the earth was found, where the Lorvey crawled out. It’s being dealt with.” Spock was silent for a moment, listening to Jim’s breathing, the even inhale and exhale of his breath. He would not soon forget the night before, when Jim’s own lungs had turned on him, the rattling gasp of poisoned tissue. “Ambassador Bilquis does request one final audience, however, as does the high council of Jadis, but this can and will be postponed until your recovery.” 

“Mmf.” Jim moved his head to a more comfortable position. “You’re okay.”

It was not phrased as a question, but Spock answered anyway. “I am fully recovered. I came to ascertain that yours is progressing as it should be.”

“Course,” mumbled Jim, his hands relaxing on top of his blanket. He let out a breath, blurred from weariness. 

Technically and ethically speaking, Spock should have firmly and immediately blocked off the gateway that had unwittingly opened between their minds. The simple meld he had initiated on Jadis had been a relatively impulsive decision, based purely on the desire to eliminate any amount of Jim’s suffering that he could. Their natural mental compatibility and companionship, however, had turned it into a mutual bond. Knowing what he knew about mind melds, and  _ Vulcan  _ melds, Spock knew that he should terminate it without Jim’s unequivocal consent.

Ever since Jadis, Spock had had the bizarre, odd feeling that he needed to tell Jim something, as though he’d forgotten to inform him of some vital breakthrough, or perhaps the behavior of a science team. This, however, felt more important, and in his meditation that day, as he sought to absorb the events of Jadis, it had eluded him. It lurked somewhere just beyond conscious thought. 

Strange. 

Spock, impulsively, lifted his hand. In a mirror gesture of the one Jim had performed on Jadis, he traced the curve of Jim’s eyebrow, his fingers touching the skin above Jim’s left eye, the hollow beside the bridge of his nose.

Jim exhaled again. It was quieter, easier. His eyes, still so blue in the darkness, watched Spock pensively for a moment, weariness pulling his eyelids down. Spock allowed his fingers to trail through Jim’s hair. Jim’s eyes closed. 

Quieter, easier. 

The gateway between their shared minds was opened, just a little. Spock sent a soft hum through—the hushed light of distant stars. A muted memory; a remembered glance; an inaudible conversation. Its purpose existed purely in tranquility, diffusive as water. 

Jim’s shoulders relaxed. His breathing evened out. 

Spock stayed for an indeterminable amount of time, considering in the darkness. His fingers continued to trail mindlessly through Jim’s hair.

_____________

Two days later Jim managed to annoy Bones enough that Bones, at last, kicked him out of medbay. 

Jim went to the turbolift and tried to orient his thoughts as it shot upward. This was why he hated being stuck in medbay: you get back out and suddenly you don’t know what the fuck day it is or what the fuck you’re supposed to be doing at that exact second because stuff’s been hastily reorganized in your absence which is nice but now you have to  _ unorganize  _ the hasty reorganization and reinsert yourself back into your proper place. 

His thoughts weren’t helpful, either. They were saying one thing, and that one thing was  _ breakfast.  _

The turbolift opened and Spock stepped inside. The doors slid shut.

Well,  _ now  _ his thoughts weren’t thinking about breakfast, but they absolutely weren’t doing anything helpful, either. 

“Captain,” said Spock, inclining his head. “I was under the impression that Dr. McCoy was keeping you for a significantly longer period of time.”

“I’m very annoying when I want to be,” said Jim primly. “It’s incredible what people will do to get you out of their sight after you’ve been annoying for long enough.”

“When you want to be, Captain?” asked Spock innocently, one eyebrow ticking up slightly.

Jim snorted. “ _ Okay.”  _

Spock gave him a sideways glance, his eyes pleased and warm. 

Jim exhaled. 

They sat in silence for a few seconds, and just before the turbolift opened to drop them off at their destination, Jim did a very Jim thing: that is, he made an extremely impulsive decision without entirely thinking it through and  _ absolutely  _ not thinking about any of the consequences, at all. 

He hit the switch to take them back down the other direction,  _ far  _ down the other direction, opposite of where they needed to go. 

When he turned around, Spock tipped his head to one side, and Jim could imagine him thinking,  _ is it being human that makes him behave this way, or is it just him? _

Well. 

Besides. 

Since they were changing stories. 

Since they were saying things.

“Captain, is there—”

“You said you wouldn’t go back without me.” 

And just like that, the air shifted, and it was the anticipation before the ocean shed its blue and turned blinding white as it crashed over slick rocks, leaping into the sky.

Jim looked at him. 

When he locked into Spock’s gaze, he knew Spock knew precisely what he meant.

“I remember that,” said Jim. 

Spock admitted simply, cataclysmically: “It is true. I will not.” A breath. A pause. “Nor will I ever.” 

Jim was about to leapt straight over those slick rocks, straight into the sky. “You asked me why I was going to leave.”

Spock’s eyes were liquid. He waited, the way he always did, the way Jim would have given anything for him to wait for the rest of Jim’s life. Jim glanced away, unable to keep looking there. His words were in his throat, all tangled together, all trying to get out. 

“There were a lot of reasons, and it’s complicated. But I didn’t ask the admiral about the position until I heard you were leaving.” 

He had leapt, but he hadn’t hit the ground yet. He felt like it was coming. He was hanging, suspended, in time, in the edges of the waves. If only he could have left the story there: shivering, held. 

Jim didn’t know what to do with his hands. He looked back at Spock. He took a breath. “It’s not… nothing’s the same without you.” 

Somewhat lamely, perhaps. But for once in his life, his mind had fallen silent. 

“Thank you for last night,” Jim said. 

Spock didn’t say anything. Jim almost didn’t want him to. He still hadn’t come crashing down yet. 

Almost unthinkingly, almost unconsciously, he touched the door in his mind that Spock had slipped through the night before. And almost,  _ almost _ impulsively, he let some of the things in his chest slip through that door. They flitted through like leaves, autumnal in their feeling, heavy with warmth. 

Jim almost forgot that doors lead somewhere.

Almost. 

Spock’s eyes widened infinitesimally. Jim heard as his breath snagged in his throat.

The turbolift slid to a stop, then began its climb once more, and Spock reached over and hit the button that would keep the turbolift from stopping until they were at their destination. He pressed it with exactly as much force as necessary, and then he turned to Jim. 

Jim was still in the air, waiting to hit the ground. 

And then he didn’t, or maybe he did, but it didn’t hurt at all—because Spock was taking Jim’s face in his hands, warm fingers against his cheekbones, his jaw, under his ears, and their faces were close together, and they were breathing the same air—and in a single, rushing moment, Spock’s mouth was on his.

We have said: Jim Kirk was not a creature of moderation.

Let it further be said: surprisingly, delightfully unpredictably...neither was Spock.

Jim had years of touches he hadn’t allowed himself behind him, years of his hands reaching but never quite  _ there _ . It was as though all those years surged back at once, and his hands were greedy things—they gripped at Spock’s shoulders, his neck, his head, clung to the gloss of his hair—and his mouth was greedier still. He kissed Spock back, and before his mind could catch up, could say that this was not allowed, Spock gripped his face tighter and did not let go. 

They kissed, hungry creatures. 

They kissed, and it was a room of furniture they’d seen for years: six inches to the left. 

Spock’s hands were hot, demanding, their kisses open-mouthed, and Jim felt it in his whole body, and everything felt like it was lined in gold— 

The turbolift slid smoothly to a stop, and the teeny tiny part of Jim’s brain that was still online panicked and began shrieking. 

Jim tore his mouth from Spock’s, and it took everything in him to do it, to make his catastrophically impatient hands  _ let go.  _ He scrambled an appropriate several inches away from Spock to make it look like they hadn’t just been clinging to each other, like they hadn’t just been— 

_ Oh, my  _ God _ .  _

He stared forward in shock as the doors opened.  _ Don’t look at him don’t look at him don’tlookathimdon’tlook—  _

He was aware that his mouth was hanging open just as Uhura, on the other side of the turbolift doors, looked at him questioningly. One sleek eyebrow crawled up. 

Snapping his jaw shut so hard he heard an audible click, he nodded and said, “Lieutenant,” and marched out— _ speed  _ marched out. 

He was so fucked, so so so  _ so fucked  _ and they were  _ never  _ going to be able to come back from this, not  _ ever, _ and he thought he might have just made a cheater out of somebody, he’d just become  _ the other person,  _ but what was the nature of Spock and Nyota’s relationship, anyway, and God,  _ Spock  _ had kissed  _ him—  _

“Captain on the bridge,” came the crisp call, and Jim, with every ounce of years of practice, pulled on his captain persona until that was all he was. 

___________

Later he felt like scrubbing his brains out.

Bones said, “What’s on your mind?”

Jim said, “I think I’ve fucked it up and I don’t know how.”

____________

That night, Spock settled down to meditate and found that he could not. 

His mind kept replaying the feel of Jim’s mouth on his, and finally, he rearranged his thoughts to compensate for it, allowing it, examining it. 

Spock took a deep, complete breath, and as he exhaled, he allowed the memory to lace through the rest of his interactions with Jim—all of them, from that first, irritating moment, to every second afterwards, every time he’d allowed Jim to come closer, allowed Jim to see him, had seen Jim in return— 

The want of the moment in the turbolift seeped through, colored his memories in hindsight, and in one solid, pivotal shift, the equation that he’d felt was out of his reach, the imbalance he’d been feeling—he had it in his hands. 

Monumental in its simplicity. All that was necessary was to take Jim Kirk and place him where he belonged. The mystery of the equation was solved not by shifting any variables, but by changing the answer. 

Spock opened his eyes and stared at the wall in front of him, too engrossed in his epiphany to keep them peacefully shut. 

Memories flickered in a fixed line, all of them with Jim’s golden hair, his laughter, his hands. Spock’s unbalanced equation was his own fault—he had added too many unnecessary variables, cluttered up what was as incomplex as gravity. It was Jim, and Jim, over and over again: Jim with purpose and earnestness radiating off him in the captain’s chair, Jim with his bright courage, his determination to do right, Jim’s eyes as blue as a Terran sky, locking with his—an enigmatic mystery to most of the crew, but with each knowing, teasing glance, more known to Spock than anyone in the world. Jim, with his bold passion, with his brassy and reckless intensity; Jim, with his capable, gesticulating hands, always tracing every emotion that raced across his brain, always reaching for something, for everything. 

Jim, with those hands in Spock’s hair. 

Jim, with his mouth on Spock’s. 

Jim, who was always looking before Spock met his eyes. 

Spock stared at the wall, his heart seized and stuttering, the silence ringing in his ears like bells. The disquiet inside of him had vanished. 

He sifted through the rest of the equation for the rest of his meditation, dissolving the irrelevant, making room for something that grew bright and large inside him. It was perhaps the product of an instant, but it was also a realization, something that had accumulated and formed long before he shined a light on it. 

After several hours, he stood. He had the bizarre feeling that he was abruptly seeing the world somehow in a more brilliant, saturated way, as though he had been looking at muted life before this. He remembered the impressions, the emotions that Jim had tossed through to him—pieces of light, somehow, like a sun filtering its rays through clouds. 

Spock had to wonder if this was what his mother had wanted for him after all: a logical Vulcan mind, seeking peace and tranquility within Vulcan standards, and the gift of a strikingly chromatic way of seeing things—a human heart in a Vulcan side. 

He slept for two-point-three hours to satisfy his human weariness, and once he had risen and dressed, he went to find Nyota. 

She was in her quarters at this hour, and let him in at once. 

“Are you okay?” She gestured that he should sit and went to get them both tea, such a routine gesture that it put Spock slightly more at ease, and he consciously unknotted his shoulders. “I only heard a few things, but most of them are bad. I saw Jim today, but what happened?” 

“Jim encountered the amount of trouble that is entirely typical of Jim.” Spock’s voice was dry, tinged with a certain aspect of humor, but the statement unfortunately held a modicum of truth. 

The amusement on her face was short-lived. “Of course he did.” 

He told her the shortened version of what had transpired, knowing she desired to know, and she rolled her eyes and used a few choice words when Spock told her what had befallen Jim. 

“ _ Of course  _ he was stabbed by a poisonous  _ something _ ,” she said, sitting back in her chair. They sat comfortably across from each other, a well-worn practice born of years of companionship. “And you know what? He’s going to turn that into one of his stories. It’s not even going to be a big deal to him in three days.” 

Spock thought about Jim’s wan, exhausted face, the way his whole body had convulsed in terror through his nightmares, how he had drawn within himself even as he recovered. 

“Perhaps,” he said. 

As though she could hear some of the unrest in his voice (and—knowing Nyota—she probably could) Nyota tipped her head to one side, studying him. Spock stared back, and though he was perfectly aware that his expression was smooth, he abruptly felt that all the tumultuous emotions from the previous two days were emanating from him in waves, the shift in his existence fully visible to her probing gaze. 

“Something happened,” said Nyota, confirming his prediction that she would pinpoint such a thing. 

He could not put off the discussion—it would be dishonorable, and what had happened in the turbolift still sat heavy on his mind—on his mouth. “Nyota,” he began, “I must admit that I have not entirely—”

“No, wait.” She held up both of her slender hands, effectively stopping him in his tracks. When he met her eyes, he was surprised to find that her eyes were full of something like humor. 

She must have seen the puzzlement he felt. “Sorry,” she said, a helpless grin flashing across her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t think this is funny. You’re about to tell me that you want our relationship...discontinued.”

He stared at her. “While I admit that is the case, I fail to understand your source of amusement.” 

She chuckled. “Spock, we haven’t been in love with each other for a while. Maybe it was never, I don’t know. I’m not saying I didn’t care for you,” she added quickly, as though concerned about offending him. “I did, and I do. But something happened while you were down there, didn’t it?” 

When he did not deny it, she shrugged and said, “Well. Something happened up here.”

Spock watched with something akin to astonishment as a dusky blush colored her cheeks. “Am I correct in assuming that you…?”

Nyota interrupted him with a sound of self-deprecating disdain and rolled her eyes. “You know that new medical transfer?”

Spock flicked through the new transfers in his mind before he settled on the most likely candidate. “Christine Chapel.” 

Nyota tugged irritably at the end of her hair. “She minored in linguistics, she has  _ incredible  _ hair, and her grasp on the syntax of Romulan specific to the northeastern region is  _ amazing,  _ okay?”

If Spock had been human, he would have laughed. As it was, he understood her humor now. Her admission was easy, to the point, and, more prevalently, did not affect him in the slightest. In fact, he felt a thread of relief trickle through him. 

“I was unaware that a knowledge of syntax was capable of compromising you so thoroughly.” He was lightly teasing her, and she smirked at him, recognizing it on sight. 

“I’m attracted to intelligence. It’s why I wanted you in the first place.”

“I will have to examine my intellect to find my shortcomings, then.”

She grabbed one of her decorative pillows and threw it into his lap. “It’s not you and you know it.”

“Dr. McCoy once informed me that if “an earth girl tells you it’s not you, it’s you,’” Spock mused. 

“Do not listen to a word Leonard McCoy says when it comes to romantic attachment, he wouldn’t know it if it danced in front of him wearing a tea cozy.”

Spock blinked at her in bewilderment. “How does a concept…”

She waved him off. “Never mind, never mind. The point is, I am not lying to you. So what happened with Jim?”

Something about her phrasing was off, and it took a moment of reflection to realize that she had already known that if something had “happened,” it would have been with Jim. 

So visible to everyone but him. How much time had he wasted? 

“It appears that I have become less self-aware in the past few years,” he said at length. 

Nyota’s smile was immediate, gentle. “You’ve been absolutely blind, is what you’ve been.” The rebuke was softened with the expression in her eyes, with his understanding of what she meant. “I thought you’d get it after Khan. Maybe I was foolish in trying to continue our relationship after I knew, but we’ve both been a little blind, I suppose. It was selfish of me, I think.”

“Selfishness is not a quality you possess, Nyota. We were acting to the best of our knowledge and I believe our intentions were acceptable.” 

“Were they?” Nyota sighed, her expression troubled. She twisted the length of her hair around her hand. “Maybe. But I think it hurt him, Spock. And I don’t know for how long. He’s so damn good at  _ hiding _ things.” 

Spock tilted his head at her, face blank, and felt his shoulders knot again.

“That’s when I really knew,” said Nyota, lacing her long fingers together behind her head. “There was this one day—God, I remember this. It was when I still really thought I loved you, but there was this  _ futility  _ to it, but this was back when I didn’t want to acknowledge it...anyway, there was this one day that he was looking at you, and you looked back, and it was like—” she snapped her fingers in lieu of words, and Spock thought he knew what the gesture meant. “It was like he’d just told you everything he’d ever thought, and you’d responded to all of it. And you didn’t look away for a long time, but when you did…” Her hands sketched something unnameable in the air, her mouth pursed as she searched for words. “He…you know that smile he’s always got just around his mouth? Even when he’s not smiling?”

Spock did.

“He… dropped it. It was gone. He looked like someone had snuffed out the lights. And I didn’t think anything of it except…” 

Spock waited, but not patiently.

She sighed and met his eyes. “Except that look came back every time he saw us touch each other.”

Foolishly, bizarrely, this aspect had not occurred to Spock. He tried to consider the fact that Jim perhaps felt precisely the same way while simultaneously conceding that if he did, it would have been acutely painful for Jim to experience it while observing a relationship so closely. 

Spock was then forced to acknowledge that the simplicity of his realization, a relief to him, would have been immensely complicated—and difficult— for Jim. 

Nyota gave him a sad smile as she watched the play of conclusions cross his face. “I would apologize, but you’re sort of hard to give up.”

“It was not my intention to cause any pain, Nyota—”

She said, “There’s not, anymore.” A pause. “It’s too hard to keep up with the two of you. You outstrip everybody around you.”

Spock was puzzled by her statement. “Your intellect is quite admirable, Nyota. I fail to understand how you cannot ‘keep up.’” 

“Spock.” She leaned forward, her hands gesturing at him in a way that he understood meant ‘this is human.’ “Half of your communication takes place without either of you  _ saying  _ anything. You’ve objected to three things before Jim has a chance to voice any of them.”

“My objections are often well-founded,” said Spock succinctly. “And his behavior is predictable enough to anticipate his actions.”

With something akin to pity, Nyota said, “Spock. His behavior is only that predictable to  _ you.”  _

Spock was beginning to feel that Nyota had sorted through the entirety of the equation of his existence and was therefore not patient with him while he tried to replicate the process. Really, he thought; she would have made an excellent Vulcan. 

Nyota said, “You know him better than anybody, and he knows  _ you  _ better than anybody else. When something is wrong, who can tell first? Is it me, or him?”

Spock pressed his lips together before repeating, “I have no wish—”

“Spock. Just say it. Me or him?” 

Spock merely looked at her. He knew the answer now, and she had for a long time. 

With keen precision, Nyota continued, “And when something  _ is  _ wrong, what is your instinct? To go to me? Or him?” 

The answer, Spock thought, to everything. He could only stare, and move forward. 

Before he could articulate a response, she reached over and placed her hands on his knees. “I know,” she said, though he had not spoken. “That’s why I knew this conversation would happen, and I already knew the outcome.” 

He hesitated, then drew his hand over her hair. “I regret that I have been obtuse in this matter,” he said very quietly. “My desire was honesty, and I fear that I have caused a great deal of pain on all sides.” 

Her expression was fond. “You and Jim are  _ insufferable  _ when you’re in the same room.”

His lips quirked up in a tiny smile. He conceded, “Perhaps.”

Nyota said, “Tell him I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

She gave him her own small smile and quoted, “Perhaps.” She ran her own hands through his hair. “I loved you, anyway. Not as well as he does, maybe. But as well as I could.”

“It was enough.” 

“Not anymore.” But her expression was open, content: this fact did not trouble her. “For the best, I think.”

He sensed the closing of the conversation, and the close of something else—but it had been unraveling for quite some time, and he watched its end without regret. “Our friendship is still intact, I trust.”

She laughed: lovely and satisfied. “Who else will I talk to about xenolinguistics?”

“Christine Chapel, presumably.” 

Her shrug was full-body. She sat back on her sofa. “She’s prettier than you.”

He rose fluidly. “I will leave that judgment in your capable hands.”

Her indolent laughter accompanied him out. 

__________

_ We’re never going to be able to come back from this _

This was Jim’s predominant thought in the days that followed. 

He had no idea what he was supposed to do, so he pretended as though nothing had changed. Maybe if he did that, nothing  _ would  _ change.

This thought both relieved him and disappointed him

He’d thought that there would be something monumentally, colossally different if he and Spock ever kissed—when he’d let himself think about it, if at all. “What if” scenarios didn’t ever fully construct themselves when you labelled them very strictly “impossible.” What came after something you’d wanted for years but thought you’d never have  _ happened?  _

_ And I’m the other  _ goddamn person, he would think, every time he walked past Nyota.

It wasn’t like they’d slept together. It wasn’t like they were even in any sort of relationship. But the guilt ate at him nevertheless. 

The truth was, however, that they were still a command team. They ran a starship. It didn’t matter that Jim remembered the feel of Spock’s hands in his hair, because he had a captain’s log to record in and headquarters to report to and Jadis officials to meet with. 

The next morning, when Jim had brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face and told himself very firmly that everything was fine, now, it had gone back to normal. Bones had thrown an absolute temper tantrum when Jim had left medbay, but in truth, besides the need for a little more rest, there wasn’t anything much wrong with Jim. He’d promised very mildly to take it easy for the next few days and shorten his shifts, and Bones had finally and grumpily made him swear to report to medbay for the next few days at _ least  _ twice a day and let him go. 

The first matter of business after checking on his bridge crew was to report to Starfleet headquarters, something that Spock would join him in. 

Instead of a blinding revelation or a mind-numbingly awkward interlude, however, Spock and Jim merely exchanged a long-suffering glance when the questions became a little too tedious (which was normal), and when a particularly obtuse question was put to them, Spock pointedly refused to meet Jim’s eyes while he stared meaningfully at the side of Spock’s head (which was normal). They filed reports together in the ready room and Jim made several annoyed comments while Spock either made small noises of agreement or contributed his own cutting remarks (which was normal). They ate lunch and Spock blandly pushed at Jim until Jim reported to medbay (which was normal). Jim then went and sat comfortably in his captain’s chair and attended to general business while Spock sat at his science station and took care of his own business (which was so normal that Jim actually wondered for a moment if he’d actually kissed Spock or if he’d just hallucinated the whole thing). 

But then came the meeting with the officials of Jadis, and when Jim headed to the transport pad, Spock was at his right shoulder so fast Jim had to wonder if he’d learned how to teleport by himself. Jadis had sworn up and down that there was no more interference in the atmosphere, that transporting capabilities would be easily accessible, that nothing would go amiss, but it was abundantly clear to Jim that Spock fully mistrusted the planet’s atmosphere and Jim himself to get him back in one piece and scorned any attempt to leave him on board. 

Bones was there to threaten them, Chekov was there to be both brightly curious and brightly worried, Scotty was there just because, and then both of them beamed down. 

Jim made a glorious noise of disgust when the cold hit him, and Spock exhaled just loud enough for Jim to be able to interpret it as a colossal sigh. 

Everything seemed to have been put slightly in fast forward. Jim met with the officials with the routine calm and slight boredom of an adventurer who has been put upon to actually perform the technical side of exploring. Going boldly was exhilarating in and of itself, but God, there was a  _ cost,  _ and that cost was  _ paperwork  _ and  _ logs  _ and  _ reporting.  _

He couldn’t stop thinking about the undone look in Spock’s eyes, the point of his ear as he turned his head away, the soft, rushed breath he’d taken. The gentle night in medbay, with Spock’s long fingers trailing over his skin. 

_ God  _ he was so  _ fucked.  _

Just as fucked as he’d always been, because nothing had changed. This was, Jim reflected as the officials finally declared themselves satisfied, both a good thing and a bad thing. 

He wanted more.  _ More more more more more.  _ Now that he knew what Spock’s touch actually felt like, and it wasn’t the rushed graze of accidental touch, or the relieved, brief snatch of contact after a stressful situation, or the fleeting moments of any other time—now that he knew how it felt on purpose, he wanted to push it, test it, find every corner of it. He wanted it to push back.

In reality, however—which he was painfully aware of—Spock might not want anything more to happen along those lines. 

Jim stood with Spock and headed out of the conference room, the sun brilliant and gleaming off every facet of the crystalline city for once. Jadis was beautiful in the light, radiant in its symmetry. 

Jim had to look at it from every angle, and there was an angle that screamed that Spock had not meant for that to happen, that it had been a bizarrely charged, impulsive decision, that once Spock’s prized control had reasserted itself, that once the daylight came, things looked different. Things looked how they’d always looked. Six inches back to the right. 

_ We’re never going to be able to come back from this  _

It made him want to find his long-gone motorcycle and drive off in whatever direction he chose. It was an old, long-forgotten urge, and Jim discarded it after a moment with a practice that was only a few years old—almost too young for having to dispel a bone-deep reaction. 

Jim and Spock went down the hallway made of windows, and it looked familiar to Jim. After a disjointed moment, he realized that it was the same hallway that Bilquis had taken him to when she had offered him a seat down on earth with her. 

“Jim!”

Speaking of Bilquis.

Spock and Jim turned in the same fluid motion. 

Jesus. 

Jim half-glanced at Spock and then smiled at Bilquis, who gripped his head in her hands and kissed his forehead fiercely. 

“Trouble,” she called him. Tigerlike. Her hunter’s heart gleamed in her eyes. 

He said, “I have not had any near-death experiences in the last forty-two hours. I’d say that’s unwarranted.”

She ruffled his hair, and God—now he could compare that to Spock, too. His name, and now the touch of anyone’s hands. Spock would ruin him for everything if he gave any more. 

Not that it mattered. He could say  _ let go  _ all he wanted and he’d still give Spock anything and everything.

“Commander,” said Q, facing Spock fully. Brash, and bold, and immovable. He should have loved her. “If I may.”

Spock and Jim exchanged a glance. Spock inclined his head, and Jim and Bilquis walked down the hallway, off away from anyone where they wouldn’t be overheard. 

Jim glanced back. The light bathed Spock in pale gold, illuminating the elegant planes of his face, the curve of his mouth, the black streaks of his eyebrows, the sharp angle of his ears. He was beautiful, and Jim loved him. 

Jim turned to Bilquis, waiting, as she fixed her luminous eyes on him, touchable and effervescent and dauntless. He could have loved her. Should, could. Jim almost wished he could have made it matter. 

But the story, despite its variations, remained the same, engraved in Jim’s blood, bone-deep in its sincerity: in space, there was Jim Kirk, and there was a Vulcan named Spock. And Jim loved that Vulcan more than he loved anything. More than he loved stars. 

Bilquis’ smile was equal parts truculent and tender. A paradox of predators. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.” 

He rolled his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “I’m pretty hard to keep down.” Growing solemn, he locked eyes with her. “Q. I’m sorry about Yara.”

Her smile hardened. “It was her decision.”

“It was. And it was a selfish awful one.” 

She cupped his chin in her hand. “Well, she’s in prison for it and I’m upset about it, and that’s the way it goes, I suppose. I’ve got ambassadorial duties, I can’t go having a breakdown about a sister who decided to play god.” 

“She’s got some divine skills to work on.”

“Which one, in particular?”

“I think the whole ‘omniscient’ bit got her in the end.”

“I think I’ll call it ‘pride.’”

“Same thing.”

“It’s really not.” But her eyes had softened. “You’re going back.” 

“There’s a never ending sky out there, or so they tell me.”

“You don’t have to be the one to find out.” Her fingers tightened, just a little. 

He took her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I’ll tell the infinite vastness of space hello for you.”

She looked at him, and he could tell that she knew that this was good-bye. “Does it still look empty from where you’re standing?” 

“You tell me.”

Bilquis glanced over his shoulder, back where Spock stood in the light—waiting for Jim. She gripped his face again, staring him straight in the eyes. 

“Full to the brim,” she said. “You go get your stars, Kirk.”

His grin was bright and mischievous. He said, “I’ll rattle every last one.”

____________

Bilquis crossed her arms and watched him go, confident and straight-shouldered, his golden hair shining in the light. Jim Kirk had always had the gift of precisely knowing his destination—if not the partner gift of exactly  _ how _ he was going to get there. It had been that way even when they had been young: he devoured what he wanted, and from the very beginning, everybody had known that James Tiberius Kirk would make the night sky his until he died. 

Commander Spock glanced over and watched Kirk return to him, a magnet drawn to metal. Jim seemed to be able to read his first officer perfectly despite the smooth, unruffled expression on the Vulcan’s face, an expression that had remained firmly in place right up until Kirk was in danger. 

Bilquis thought it was fascinating that Jim thought Spock wasn’t in love with him. Bilquis had spent all of two days with the pair and it hadn’t even taken that long before she’d realized they were never, not ever, going to be without each other. Jim was constantly looking around for Spock, but the reason Spock seemed to always be there was simply because Spock never let Jim out of his sight. 

_ Honestly.  _

Bilquis watched fondly as Jim put his head close to his first officer’s and said something, caught the corner of his bright smile.

She watched Spock very carefully. She’d learned that if she blinked, she’d miss it. 

For a split second, the Vulcan’s face shifted infinitesimally. His eyes warmed, and his lips quirked into a tiny, amused smile, a smile Bilquis was beginning to suspect was only for Jim Kirk. 

He said something back to Kirk, and Kirk’s shoulders moved in a soft laugh. Moving past Commander Spock, Jim began to walk away, back to the transporter pad, back to his ship.

Spock glanced back at her, eyes and expression unflappable once again. 

Knowing that he would hear her with his Vulcan hearing, Bilquis smiled understandingly at him and said, “How lucky you are.”

Spock looked at her for a moment. Then he inclined his head, his eyes a little less unfathomable than they had been a moment before, turned, and followed Jim back to their ship. Bilquis watched them go, her city gleaming like a diamond behind her.    
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kiddos, companions, comrades, it is the end! Thank you so so so much to everyone who sent me sweet, lovely notes, to everyone who has read this far, and to those who will read someday. Love you all. Big fan of every one of you.  
Come chat with me at the-stars-will-do-the-telling.tumblr.com!  
Thanks so much again, darlings.

_ _______________________________________________________ _

_ Please, could you be tender _

_ -Lorde _

_ _________________________________________________________ _

  


Jim entered through their shared bathroom.

Technically against the rules. 

But who gave a fuck at that point.

Spock glanced over at him and tipped his head, looking entirely unsurprised to see him. He was dressed in loose, dark clothing. The lights were low. Spock’s hands were resting on his knees. 

Jim eyed him and said, “I can come back later.”

Spock stood fluidly and said, “You should be resting.”

Jim made a face at him, knowing this was an indication that he was not, in fact, bothering Spock. “You’re as bad as Bones. I want to talk to you.”

Spock went to the replicator and began their respective beverages. They’d spent too many evenings together for routine not to kick in automatically.

“Jim—” 

“No, I think I need to go first.” Jim pressed his lips together, watching Spock closely. 

Spock gestured that he should proceed. 

“Look,” said Jim, troubled. Spock watched him as his hands came up. _ We _ have _ to be able to come back from this I can’t take it if we can’t come back from this— _ “Look. I know what—what happened in...in the turbolift might not— ” He stopped, frustrated with himself. Spock stared at him, as bewildered as he ever got. Jim could never _ talk _ properly when the stakes were this high, he’d never _ had _ to deal with something like this, he’d never been this _ fucking in love— “ _I know that you might not want. That. What I’m saying is, if you wanted to sort of...pretend it never happened, I would understand.” Jim glanced at Spock with piercing blue eyes, then looked away again just as quickly. “So. And I know that, um. Nyota might still be…” He stopped himself again, heaved an irritated sigh, closing his eyes. Keeping them closed, he said, his voice abruptly quieter: “Your friendship is the most important thing to me. I just want to make sure that nothing… nothing’s changed.” 

Spock looked at him, something in his expression that Jim couldn’t name. Jim was trying to make another sentence come out of his mouth, one that actually made some goddamn sense, because this was _ important— _

But Spock’s face changed to something like defiance, something like determination, and he strode across the room before Jim could catch his breath. Jim opened his mouth, to say what, he didn’t know, but Spock did not stop until he’d slotted his body in between Jim’s hands, their chests nearly pressed together, Spock’s warmth radiating off him. Anticipation crackled in the air, the electric charge that had followed them since Jadis humming to life. Jim’s eyes widened in shock.

“Um,” he said, eloquently. Words slid from him like water. 

“It has changed,” said Spock.

Jim stared at him. 

Spock flicked a searching look over his face, and as soon as his gaze landed on Jim’s mouth, Jim lost track of who leaned in first, who reached forward first. 

It was as hungry as the first time, but this time there was no one to stop them, no turbolift doors to let reality back in. Jim forgot what he had been wanting to say. Jim forgot his own name. There was only Spock, hot and alive and grasping, and this want roaring in his blood, his hands touching and touching and touching. Their kisses were open-mouthed, messy, Jim’s hands running over Spock’s hair, his arms latching around Spock’s neck as Spock hooked his hands onto Jim’s shoulder blades, and who cared about anything, really, with their breaths hitching, mingling into one, sharp inhales and exhales hissing between them. 

Jim hummed and made a sound that was his brain scrambling to catch up to him with good solid reasoning. He freed one hand from around Spock’s neck and ran it down Spock’s side, until he felt a Vulcan heartbeat. 

God, he wasn’t going to be able to _ stop— _

But he did it. He moved his hands, grabbed Spock’s face, and separated them by a hairsbreadth, gasping, “Wait, wait wait wait _ wait _a second, wait a second.”

Spock let out a breath that Jim could taste and it nearly undid him. “Yes?” 

Spock looked _ rumpled _ and that about made him go back in all over again, sanity and answers be damned, but then he’d just have to pull away again. Neither of them moved their hands, or tried to move any further apart. 

Jim dug his fingers back into Spock’s hair and mussed at it, just because. “_ Not _that I’m complaining,” he was quick to start with, “but what...is all this about?

“You were saying foolish things,” said Spock, like it was obvious. “I decided to stop you from continuing.”

“You are going to start hearing _ a lot _more foolish things come out of my mouth, then, if that’s how you’re going to stop me.”

“Such as…”

“I don’t think gravity really exists.”

Spock kissed him again, and Jim grinned against his mouth. “Incorrect,” Spock murmured, still not really moving away from him. 

“Mmf,” said Jim, kissing him once, twice. Spock’s hands were warm on his back. “No, _ wait. Dammit. Stop _it. I was trying to say something.”

“If it pertains to the frankly ludicrous idea of the lack of any sort of gravitational force, I _ will _stop you from continuing that train of thought.”

“No, you bastard. It was about _ Nyota.” _

Spock skimmed his nose along Jim’s cheek to his jaw. “What specifically about her?”

Jim tilted his head against Spock’s. “You know what,” he mumbled against Spock’s cheek.

Spock trailed his fingers over Jim’s neck, and Jim shivered. “She has placed her affections elsewhere and we have amicably terminated our relationship.”

Jim (understandably, he thought) was having a hard time focusing. “You...she _ what?” _

Jim felt Spock’s mouth twist into his slight smile against his skin. “You sound affronted."

“I _ am _ affronted _ , _ did you just say she placed her affections _ somewhere else?” _

“As I am guilty of the same thing you can hardly find fault with her.”

Jim tried to see Spock’s expression. “Are you upset about it?”

Spock pulled his head up. Amusement and exasperation gleamed in his eyes. “Do I _ seem _upset?”

“I’m trying to absorb a lot of information.”

“If you don’t mind, I would rather not discuss Nyota, as she is not particularly relevant to this situation.”

“Okay, _ okay,” _ Jim grumbled. “We’ll leave your apparent _ ex _out of this.”

“Our relationship has been deteriorating for some time,” said Spock reasonably. “It was not a surprise to either of us.” 

“Oh.”

Spock stared at him, eyes searching, then said, so stiffly and politely that Jim knew that he was uncertain, “Are you experiencing dissatisfaction with the current proceedings?”

Jim blanched, his hands tightening compulsively. “First of all, you have _ no idea _ how _ long—” _ He cut himself off, reassuring Spock, “No. I’m just wondering. This doesn’t seem _ sudden, _per say, but—”

“Say what you were going to say.” 

Jim stopped, pretending like he didn’t know what Spock was talking about. “Hm?” 

Spock framed Jim’s face in his hands. His eyes were burning with that defiance that had always made Jim’s brain go haywire, rare enough that it always took everyone, including Jim, completely off guard. It was Spock’s “I’m right and I _ will _destroy you about it” face and it made Jim want to shove him up against a wall. 

“You said “you have no idea how long,”” Spock said. “What did that mean?”

Jim stared at him, and something like desperation crawled up his throat. “We can’t…Spock,” he said, and he was almost pleading, suddenly unsure, all those years of trepidation sneaking up on him again. “Spock, we’re never going to be able to come back from this, you and me, not if…”

Spock kissed him. 

When he pulled back, Spock said, so soft that Jim could barely hear him, “Tell me.”

Resigned, Jim let out a breath. 

Where to even begin.

Letting his hand drift to Spock’s wrist bone while he thought, he looked over Spock’s face, a face he had memorized so thoroughly he could have drawn it blind, a face he loved so thoroughly he could have picked it from a crowd of thousands.

He remembered the first time he’d seen Spock, and it gave him a sudden, impulsive idea.

Jim flicked his eyes to Spock’s. “You can look,” he said, before he could think better of it. 

He had a vague idea about what Vulcan customs he was stomping all over, but with Spock’s eyes drilling into him and Spock’s kiss still sitting on his mouth and Spock’s hands on his face… 

Jim looked at Spock for a heavy moment before nudging against the door in his mind, nudging against Spock’s mind on the other side. 

Spock’s face changed, his eyes opened. “You desire this?”

Jim kissed him again. 

They wouldn’t be able to come back from this, but maybe Jim didn’t want them to. 

Against Jim’s mouth, Spock mumbled, “My thoughts to your thoughts. My mind to your mind—”

Jim flung the door wide and they met somewhere in the middle, and the door dissolved, and the walls dissolved. 

There was a single moment of screaming disorientation, a cacophony of sounds and colors and emotions as their minds met, tried to get their bearings. Jim pressed his face into Spock’s shoulder, sucking in a breath, trying to orient his own thoughts. Dimly, he felt Spock bury his face in Jim’s neck. 

Jim scrambled, focused. Another door appeared, and Jim flung it wide for Spock.

It was five years before. Spock’s chest was thinner, his demeanor all truculence and hard edges, his eyes combative and flinty. 

Jim, amused, told Spock that this version of him, though thoroughly irritating, had delighted Jim to no end, had fueled him to fight, fueled him to do better. 

The days flew by in Jim’s memory, then months. The day Spock had joined Jim’s crew after he’d become captain. The moment Jim realized he respected Spock’s opinion professionally more than anyone else’s. 

The cautious, incendiary companionship they’d formed. The first time Spock had said something that made Jim laugh. And the first time, a golden, glowing moment in Jim’s memory, that Jim had said something that had made Spock’s mouth curve slightly into his small, private smile. 

The slow, slow build of friendship. The first time Jim had asked Spock casually if he played chess, and that first, competitive match in Jim’s quarters. The surprising flare of triumph in Jim’s chest when he realized that they were bantering for the sake of talking instead of arguing for the sake of winning.

The day Spock was nearly boiled alive in the volcano. The helpless fury that Jim had felt, overwhelming and crushing— “_ Spock, we’re talking about your life here!”— _and the obvious, instant choice to save his life rather than obey any stupid protocols, listen to any damn prime directive. 

The betrayal, afterward. The insistent, quiet voice that said _ I’d do it again I’d do it again I’d do it again _over and over and over again in the back of his mind, despite everything he’d lost. 

Realizing somewhere in between that Spock had come to mean more than he should have to Jim.

Then Khan. 

Before Jim could consciously decide to keep it from Spock, all of Jim’s thoughts in the radiation chamber had seeped across their link, Jim’s pained decision to keep his mouth shut—and then the subsequent realization, after he’d woken up, that he would have to continue to keep his mouth shut. 

He watched Nyota and Spock, and walked away. 

It _ was _a miracle. It was. But he wasn’t allowed to have it. 

Jim didn’t have time to pay attention to what Spock was thinking, while they were flitting through Jim’s memories, his thoughts from the past five years. But Jim had said he would tell him, so he did, and tried not to think too hard about anything. Did he regret it? He couldn’t tell yet. 

The memories flicked past faster. Amused glances on the bridge, their comfortable chess games, _ I’d just see him when I looked at you, _ Spock at his shoulder during his testimonial of Tarsus, the pale morning after where everything was different forever, _ I miss you all the time, _ the night their ship was destroyed, Nyota wearing Spock’s mother’s necklace, Jim clutching at Spock’s shoulder and willing him to be all right on Altamid, the day of his birthday party, the sweet, quick afternoon where Jim reboarded his newly finished ship and Spock was still there, Jadis, _ we’ll never come back from this _—and through every memory, through every quick glance, Spock heard it: all the things that Jim did not say, all the things that Jim had kept, peacefully or not, to himself.

Everything blurred together in a whorl of thoughts, a tangle of words, fragments of memories. 

Jim opened his eyes. 

He wasn’t touching Spock, and the only place that Spock was touching him were his psi points. Jim could feel his own heart, thundering in his ears. His chest was heaving like he’d just run for a very long time.

Spock was staring at him, eyes chaotic and unstrung, and Jim stared back. He had no idea where to go from here, and he thought that this, possibly, was the most afraid he’d ever been in his life. It was very quiet in his thoughts, just then. He felt that his mind was suddenly cavernous, without Spock’s presence taking up space there. 

“All this time?” said Spock, his voice startlingly loud in the silence, though his voice was soft.

Jim found his voice. “Longer, even.”

Spock didn’t say anything. He just looked at Jim. Jim let him.

Jim’s hand crept up between them. His fingers fastened in the collar of Spock’s shirt.

Spock nodded once. He drew Jim back close to him, so they were nose to nose. 

Something quick and soft fell through Jim, and Jim took Spock’s face in his hands and kissed him, soft and slow. His chest ached.

Spock, after a moment, slipped his hands under Jim’s shirt and rested them there on his waist. They were warmer than human hands.

Spock looked up at Jim, considered him for an eternity with silt-dark eyes. Jim watched as they settled, warmed. Jim’s chest stilled, and his mind quieted. 

Spock asked Jim pensively, “Have I wasted our time?”

Jim kissed his neck, nosed along the long line of his throat. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He was _ hungry. _

Jim said, “You could make it up to me.”

_________

It was slow until it wasn’t, until it became greedy and hot and rough, because Jim _ was _greedy, and he wanted to know every inch of Spock’s long, elegant body, so when Spock pushed Jim down onto his bed, Jim pulled him down after him, kissed him open-mouthed, running his hands restlessly over Spock’s shoulders. There was nothing that could stop him now, nothing at all in the world, and he thought that this might actually be his to take, might have been his for a long time now if only he’d asked. 

Spock was as eager as Jim was, intense and sure and possessive, kissing Jim the way he had in the turbolift, like there was nothing else in the world that mattered more than what was happening right now, that their hands were on each other. 

There was a moment that they locked eyes, panting, and it was only them, skin on skin, Spock’s eyes wide and disheveled, Jim intent and grasping, a blazing kind of joy in his body, and _ this _was worth it, this was worth all the years of watching and not being able to have. 

Spock said his name, quietly, wonderingly, and Jim laughed a little and kissed him again, slinging his arms around Spock’s shoulders and pulling him back down. Jim felt Spock relax, felt Spock smile a little into his mouth, and it was this, and this, and this, and Jim felt that he held every star inside of his body.

______________

Spock had wondered, in rare, inattentive moments, how Prime had done it, how he could possibly survive without Jim, how he could go on so coolly when he lived in a world where Jim Kirk had died long ago, when he felt a loss that would never go away—he could piercingly recall the day Prime, watching young Jim Kirk negotiate with a group of Andorians, had said almost offhandedly, “There has not been a day that has gone by since he died that I do not miss my Jim Kirk.”

As time went on, as the years with Jim passed, the more impossible it had seemed, and it was a question he simply could not answer. How? How could he grow old without his closest companion? 

As Jim grasped at him, demanding and looking fiercely, blindingly happy, Spock thought he knew the answer: this, and this, and this. He had not been taking advantage of this, he could have had Jim all to himself years ago, all of his time, all of his attention. He felt a breathless surge of something that could only be called exhilaration: he had not known this existed, wanting all of someone and then being given it, not just physically, but mentally. 

He couldn’t make himself think about anything just now, though; Jim bit into his shoulder and Spock inhaled sharply. He only knew one thing, as Jim took his face in his hands, his eyes a shock of blue, glowing in the darkness; he would remember this until the end— as Jim breathed his name into his skin, as their bodies intertwined—he would remember this. Until the very last hour.

Afterward, Spock tripped his fingers lightly up and down Jim’s ribs. Jim doubted he realized he was doing it. They were laying under the sheets, sharing a pillow. Jim was lazily moving his foot against Spock’s calf. 

Half-asleep, Jim murmured, “I hope this means it wasn’t one-sided.”

This made Spock laugh, low and amused, warm in the darkness. “If you have any doubts on that score, I have expressed myself very poorly this evening.”

“I can’t believe you kissed me in the turbolift.”

“You should not have looked at me that way in the turbolift, then,” said Spock, and Jim laughed sleepily at how coolly imperious Spock could sound on command even when they were lying facing each other. 

“Glad you noticed,” Jim chuckled, his words slurring. “Been looking at you that way for years, you dumb Vulcan.”

Spock’s trailing fingers moved briefly to his face. “You could have told me.”

“Oh, and risk you immediately jumping to another ship and never talking to me again? Fat chance.”

“Interesting choice of words. I don’t seem to have the urge to transfer onto a new ship, and what we’ve spent a considerable amount of time doing doesn’t seem to give you that impression either, unless I am mistaken about human customs.”

“You were _dating_ _someone else.” _

Spock exhaled, a gentle, cross sound, and Jim knew that his point had been made. 

Jim moved his own fingers around until he found Spock’s hand, touching their fingers together in a clumsy Vulcan kiss. Spock exhaled again, but it meant something different this time. 

Jim hummed, and brought Spock’s knuckles to his mouth.

“Go to sleep,” said Spock, but his voice wavered slightly, unsteady. 

Jim sighed, put-upon, and did.

______________

The next morning, Spock’s alarm went off and Jim startled awake to find Spock’s face close to his, his eyes opening in surprise.

They were coiled around each other, warm under the sheets, and Jim blinked in shock at Spock’s face, his brain short-circuiting.

After a second, he buried his face in Spock’s shoulder and let out a bark of laughter.

“This is _ insane,” _he muttered, then vaulted out of bed.

“Jim?” said Spock, his voice low and curious.

Jim groaned under his breath, sat back on the bed, and kissed Spock once on his mouth.

“We have to go back to _ work,” _Jim said, and laughed again, disbelievingly.

Spock tipped his head, bemused. “Yes—”

Jim rolled his eyes. “All right. Let’s go. Come on.”

Jim went to get up again, but before he got far, Spock fastened his arms around Jim, dragged him back down, and kissed him soundly.

When Spock let him go, Jim stared up at him, gawking openly.

A ghost of a smirk flashed across Spock’s face before he lightly climbed over Jim, walked away, and said, “I thought you said ‘let’s go.’”

“You smug _ bastard,” _said Jim, and followed him into the bathroom.

_____________

Bones could tell before Jim opened his mouth.

“I don’t want to know,” said Bones immediately, once Jim had sat down in front of him. “I don’t want to _ know. _ I am perfectly content believing that you had a nice, civil conversation sitting six feet away from each other, never once even breathing the same _ air. _DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR ME, JIM KIRK, MY INNOCENCE IS AT STAKE HERE,” he bellowed, when Jim tried to talk over him. 

“Innocence,” Jim muttered, scathingly, rolling his eyes. “How do you know I wasn’t checking in on your inventory?”

Bones narrowed his eyes at him. “Call it a hunch.” At Jim’s smirk, Bones turned away, jabbing at his PADD and ignoring Jim very pointedly.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, however, Bones said, without turning around, “As long as you’re happy.”

The wording may have been slightly sarcastic, but the sentiment, Jim knew, wasn’t. Smiling in spite of himself, Jim said, “Yeah, Leo. I think I am.”

Jim caught the corner of Bones’ smile as he shook his head in mock dismay. Jim slapped Bones on the shoulder and left, grinning to himself. 

_______________

It took very little for the two of them to adjust to their new lifestyle, because as it turned out, they had already been spending most of their time together, and the only thing that really changed was that they now enjoyed each other physically. 

They didn’t necessarily move into any one of their quarters—their things were already too in place, and as Spock pointed out, their rooms were joined already by the shared bathroom. 

However, they didn’t spend nights apart. It was never a conscious decision where they stayed—sometimes Spock would be looking over lab experiments from the science department, and Jim would be reading, and the next thing he knew he’d be waking up under a blanket with Spock peacefully meditating next to him. Sometimes they’d be playing chess in Jim’s quarters and Spock would say something innocuous and Jim would say, “Right,” and seize him from across the chess board. Once they broke a chair. Jim wasn’t paying attention at the time. 

Jim also came to know that when they had sex and after they were clean, Spock liked to sleep—specifically with him, some part of their limbs tangled. It was a bizarre, heady kind of contentment, waking up hot and peaceful, curled close together. 

Sometimes Jim liked to drag Spock in just because he could. Sometimes Spock touched their fingers together, fleetingly, in public where no one could see, and it was the thrill of jumping into warp speed.

Jim liked to think that he was good sexually, that it was his territory, that he could catch Spock off guard—and, to be fair to him, it was, and he could, much of the time. But then Spock discovered that if he kissed softly under Jim’s jaw, Jim turned pliant and quietly startled, and Spock found that when Jim was like that, Spock could get him to do whatever he wished.

The days passed, and their comfort in this new, young side of an old relationship grew like summer daylilies in Iowa. Spock’s quiet, tiny, barely-allowed smile turned into something wide and pleased when they were alone, sealed off from the rest of the universe, in one of those bucolic havens created from the incandescent triumph of full understanding, the undressed delight of being loved. Jim’s laughter was bright and glad during those cobalt nights, his eyes radiant and full; it was more than he ever thought he’d have, and for Spock, it was more than he’d ever thought existed. It was prismatic and treacherous at times, louder than life, and lying side by side next to Spock, Jim felt like he was high on it—the breathlessness of it, the vastness of it. 

One night, Spock put his mouth close to Jim’s ear and whispered a soft stream of words in Vulcan, still quietly elegant, perfectly pronounced, even though their heads were on the same pillow. 

Jim turned his head to face Spock, their noses nudging each other gently. It was dark and warm, sheets crumpled around them, and in their heads, the connection between their minds glowed like a lantern in between the trails of their thoughts. 

“Say it again,” said Jim.

Spock smiled, lovely and only for Jim. He said it again, in English, in Vulcan, and Jim said it back to him, the thing that had been pressing on Jim for years and hovering on the edges of Spock’s vision for nearly as long; the thing they had said for days and days and days to each other in thousands of different ways—the thing so long in coming—which was, of course, _ I love you. _

__________

It was this, and this, and that, and of course it was not perfect, but it was theirs, all of their moments and delays and triumphs. And it was a life. 

__________

The letter found Spock twenty-one days after Spock had first kissed Jim, and ninety-eight days after Spock Prime’s death. This detail was important to note because it was, in fact, from Prime himself, addressed to Spock. 

“I don’t get it,” said Jim, slightly dumbfounded. They were both staring at the screen. “How has it not reached you beforehand? You haven’t been hard to find! You were on shore leave for a _ month _while they fixed the Enterprise, how is this just getting to you?”

“Perhaps he did not want it to reach me until now,” said Spock pensively. “Prime knew many things he never told me, and therefore his motives can never be properly understood, or his timing.”

“Well, tell me if the world’s about to end, will you?” 

“Indeed.”

Jim hummed at him and touched Spock’s arm thoughtlessly before leaving him to read the letter. Spock watched him go, and thought of how he liked that Jim was constantly touching him now, thought of how Jim still knew precisely when to leave him to his own thoughts. 

He instructed the computer to open the file, and read the letter that his older self had left to him.

___________

Afterward, he went to Jim.

“World ending?” Jim asked him conversationally, his eyes striking in the lights of the ship.

Spock looked at him for a long, long moment. 

Jim tipped his head. “Everything okay?”

Spock reached out and touched Jim’s face. “I will allow you to read it,” he said, tripping his fingers down Jim’s cheek. “He would have wanted you to, I think.”

Jim searched his face. “Okay,” he said, at length.

Instead of saying anything else, he kissed Spock gently, and they went out onto their bridge together. The stars shone out the windows, as brilliant as diamonds in the desert sand.   


__________

TRANSCRIPT. S’CHN T’GAI SPOCK TO: S’CHN T’GAI SPOCK. FORWARDED BY: UNKNOWN

  


_ Mr. Spock— _

_ If this letter has reached you, you will perhaps be puzzled by the fact that it has reached you after my death, as I have no doubt it will. Even now, I feel the end of my physical form upon me; I have aged appropriately, and it has come time for me to die. I had decided long ago to keep any details of my life from you, as I have discussed with you previously. As our paths have diverged quite significantly, something you are also aware of, much of what I have to say about my past is irrelevant to your current journey as it is. _

_ However, there is one constant of our lives, and, I have no doubt, of all of the alternate lives of any Mr. Spock, and that of course is James T. Kirk. _

_ I once urged you to befriend James Kirk, and to open yourself to the friendship that he would provide. This of course stems from the advice of our dear sister Michael, whom I, and most likely you, still miss to this day. _

_ I write to you now to tell you that it was never just friendship between myself and Jim Kirk. I doubt there is a universe where it remains friendship for the duration of our relationship. It was, and is, something much deeper, more binding, and lasting than friendship. _

_ If this letter has reached you, it means that you are no longer involved romantically with any other parties. You will have determined from this statement that I have spied on you, and I must tell you that is something that I do not regret. It has enabled me to find joy in the progress and potential of your life, which shall be greater and more fulfilled than even mine was, I have no doubts. Though you have suffered great losses, you have proven yourself resourceful, clever and capable, and though you are me in a different life, the pride I feel is not for my own merit, but for yours. These are, indeed, separate things. _

_ I feel confident that at some point this letter will reach you, despite the fact that the conditions on which it will be sent are uncertain. It took me many, many years, indeed decades, terrible trials, and the no small task of unlearning harmful cultural beliefs to tell Jim Kirk that of course I loved him, and that I never wished to be parted from him while we both lived. He was my greatest adventure, my greatest joy—my miracle. _

_ I tell you this not to pressure you to enter into anything that you do not feel for yourself or feel ready for, but for an admittedly selfish reason: so that my legacy here will be what I wish it to be—which is not that of a renowned Vulcan scientist with a brilliant mind (though I will allow that to factor in). What I truly wish is that the world will not forget that while I lived, I loved a man called James Kirk. _

_ The rest can be forgotten. The rest was forgotten in my world, where my close companions and my love are now gone from me. But I wish for someone to know. Please forgive me for placing this burden with you, but you are the only one who can possibly understand, the only one who can comprehend why I wish for any memory of me to be inextricably tied with Jim. _

_ We lived out our days out together, my young friend. We grew old together. I was with him when he took his last breath, as I was with him for the past fifty-five years of our lives. I went on as he would have wanted me to, but I have counted the days to when we will be together again. _

_ I have lived ninety years without the great love of my life, Mr. Spock, and that time is at last drawing to a close. My _ katra _ can feel his soul, and I have no doubt that it is waiting for mine. He gets closer by the day. I dream of him, and I can almost touch him now. _

_ My hope for you, little one, is that you will not make the same mistakes I did. I went away from him for years at a time, and in all that time, I was never able to forget him, or the family that I had found aboard the Enterprise. Your life will be fulfilled only by contact, by the close relationships that will sustain you. I tried to close off this part of me, and it caused an immense amount of suffering in myself and in the family that I cherished. Embrace life, little one. Peace is attainable only when you are at peace within yourself, not when you seek to make yourself at peace with what others want of you. _

_ Do not grieve me, young one. The life you will live will outshine mine by a thousand times, and I cannot wait to witness it from wherever I am. _

_ I must go now, Mr. Spock, my friend. The sun is going down, and my Jim waits for me. _

_ —Mr. Spock _


End file.
